A Warning From New Jersey's Ospreys
For more than two decades, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey (CWF) has monitored nesting ospreys to track the health of New Jersey’s breeding population. What began as documenting one of the state’s greatest wildlife recovery stories has become an early warning system for the health of our coastal ecosystem.
Each spring and summer, CWF coordinates surveys of osprey nests across New Jersey with the help of dedicated volunteers and partner organizations. During the peak of the nesting season, biologists access nests by boat using ladders, pole-mounted mirrors, or small cameras to determine breeding success, band nestlings for future tracking, remove dangerous plastic marine debris, and collect data that helps us understand the status of the population. Nest visits are brief and carefully timed to minimize disturbance while providing critical information on the health of New Jersey’s ospreys.
Unfortunately, the data tell a troubling story.
Over the past decade, we have documented an increase in brood reduction, lower reproductive success, and more nest failures in many coastal colonies. These are signs of food stress. Along New Jersey’s coast, Atlantic menhaden, the osprey’s primary prey and one of the most important forage fish in the marine food web, have become increasingly scarce in nearshore waters during the nesting season. Without abundant menhaden, adults must spend more time searching for food, deliver smaller and fewer fish to their nests, and often cannot raise all of their young.
The 2025 breeding season was the clearest warning yet. Although New Jersey’s osprey population was officially reclassified from threatened to stable after decades of successful conservation, breeding success reached its lowest level in more than 30 years. CWF monitored 689 nests statewide and determined the outcome of 507 active nests. Of those, 288 nests (57%) failed to produce any young — nearly three times the long-term average. Only 352 young were produced statewide, a 56% decline from the previous five-year average of 805 young, and statewide productivity fell to just 0.69 young per active nest, below the 0.80 young per nest generally needed to sustain a healthy population.
New Jersey is not alone. Across the Mid-Atlantic, particularly in the Chesapeake Bay, scientists are documenting similar declines in osprey productivity. The Chesapeake Bay supports roughly 10,000 nesting pairs and has long been considered the global stronghold for ospreys. Recent research has linked poor breeding success in many parts of the bay to a shortage of Atlantic menhaden, mirroring the same patterns we are now documenting in New Jersey.
As top tier predators that feed exclusively on fish, ospreys are important bioindicators of the health of our coastal ecosystem. Their breeding success reflects the availability of the forage fish that support not only ospreys, but also striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, tuna, whales, dolphins, seals, and countless seabirds. When ospreys struggle to find enough food to raise their young, it signals that the marine food web may no longer be functioning as it should.
CWF continues to monitor osprey populations, document these alarming trends, and work with researchers, fisheries managers, and conservation partners to better understand the causes and advocate for healthy, resilient marine ecosystems. The story of the osprey has always been one of resilience and recovery. Ensuring that abundant forage fish remain available for wildlife is essential if that success story is to continue.
Why Menhaden Matter
Atlantic menhaden are the foundation of the coastal food web. They are filter feeders which convert microscopic phytoplankton into energy that supports striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, tuna, whales, dolphins, seabirds, and ospreys. When menhaden become scarce in nearshore waters during the breeding season, the effects ripple throughout the ecosystem.
The menhaden fishery is also the largest industrial fishery by volume on the East Coast. Unlike most commercial fisheries operations, menhaden are not caught for human consumption. Instead, they are processed into fish meal and fish oil, which are used in aquaculture feeds, livestock and pet foods, nutritional supplements, fertilizers, and a variety of industrial products. A significant portion of these products enters global markets.
While these products have economic value, menhaden also have immense ecological value as one of the most important forage fish in the ocean. They transfer energy from phytoplankton to top-tier predators in the food web, while improving water quality along the coast. Balancing the industrial harvest of menhaden with their essential ecological role is one of the greatest fisheries management challenges today.
To help engage citizen scientists and for the first time in over 25 years, young ospreys have been marked with an auxiliary band in New Jersey. The new band, which is a red anodized aluminum rivet band bears an alpha-numeric code that allows birders, osprey watchers, and wildlife photographers the ability to identify these individual birds by their bands. The Project Redband initiative is focused on ospreys that nest in the Barnegat Bay watershed from Brick Township to Little Egg Harbor. The main goals of the project are to engage the public in osprey management and conservation along the Jersey Shore. At the same time, while collecting data from re-sightings, we will learn about their dispersal, foraging habits, site fidelity, migration routes, and their life span.
In addition to Project Redband, CWF also engages the public through our Barnegat Light Osprey Cam, which launched in 2019 at a nest in Long Beach Island. This cam, along with our osprey project as a whole, was made possible through the generous support of the Osprey Foundation, the Zoological Society of New Jersey, Atlantic City Electric, and generous individual donors.
Thank you to our project donors and sponsors
