{"id":218596,"date":"2025-10-12T07:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T07:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/218596\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T07:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T07:03:11","slug":"study-shows-osprey-chicks-are-starving-conservationists-question-connection-to-menhaden-fishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/218596\/","title":{"rendered":"Study shows osprey chicks are starving; conservationists question connection to menhaden fishing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">(VIRGINIA MERCURY) &#8211; According to the Virginia Mercury, Conservationists have been sounding the alarm for years over the lackluster breeding seasons for osprey along the Chesapeake Bay, and debate continues about why. A <a href=\"https:\/\/ccbbirds.org\/2025\/10\/01\/deficit-in-breeding-performance-expands-for-chesapeake-bay-ospreys\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">new study<\/a> from the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William &amp; Mary shows broods that nest in areas of the Bay that rely mostly on Atlantic menhaden are more likely to starve to death just weeks after hatching.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Researchers point to populations of menhaden, a small forage fish, not being large enough to feed the chicks and the fish entering the Bay later in the breeding season as possible reasons for the starving birds. There have been signs of osprey populations struggling to breed for years, and challenges for other species that rely on the menhaden. A study about menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay specifically has been <a href=\"https:\/\/virginiamercury.com\/briefs\/virginia-fishermen-call-on-president-trump-to-protect-menhaden-in-chesapeake-bay\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">unable to get off the ground<\/a> in the state legislature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The William &amp; Mary study examined salinity levels in certain areas of the Chesapeake Bay and how they relate to the kind of fish the osprey are preying on to survive. Researcher Bryan Watts used that data to categorize the osprey populations by where they nest and what fish they will likely depend on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cOnce you get to the lower salinity water, for example, the upper James (River), you wouldn\u2019t expect menhaden to be there,\u201d Watts said. \u201cThe ospreys in that part of the river depend primarily on catfish and gizzard chad, so they don\u2019t feed on menhaden there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 2025 breeding season, which stretches from March to August, experienced major weather events that impacted the nesting. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">You can read the full story on <a href=\"https:\/\/virginiamercury.com\/2025\/10\/10\/study-shows-osprey-chicks-are-starving-conservationists-question-connection-to-menhaden-fishing\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/virginiamercury.com\/2025\/10\/10\/study-shows-osprey-chicks-are-starving-conservationists-question-connection-to-menhaden-fishing\/\">virginiamercury.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 Virginia Mercury. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(VIRGINIA MERCURY) &#8211; According to the Virginia Mercury, Conservationists have been sounding the alarm for years over the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201,76078],"class_list":{"0":"post-218596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife","10":"tag-wwny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}