The following letter was submitted as a public comment to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission on Oct. 9.
To the Editor:
In her 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson eloquently warned of the alarming impact of DDT on the survival rate of birds such as the American eagle.
This time, the canary in the coal mine is the osprey. Hungry mother birds sit on nests with starving chicks, waiting for their mates, who are desperately hunting for menhaden to bring back from the sea. Tragically, this will not happen. This alarming shortage of food for the osprey is directly linked to the shocking decrease in menhaden, a.k.a. bunker.
In the 2007 book, The Most Important Fish in the Sea, H. Bruce Franklin maintained that menhaden are the most essential fish on the planet. Ospreys would agree, since menhaden serve as their foundational food source.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now holding the fate of the osprey in its hands.
In just my small town of Barnegat Light, there were 12 active osprey nests this year, of which only three produced young. A third of the nests had adult females that did not lay eggs in the spring due to scarcity of Atlantic menhaden in the ocean. All other nests were active with eggs or young and lost them to food stress and starvation.
I urge the ASMFC to adopt the strongest conservation option under Draft Addendum II: a 50% reduction in the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery cap, along with measures that distribute harvest more evenly throughout the season and reduce the concentration of harvest during spring and summer.
The ospreys are warning us about an alarming situation. Are we listening? What critically needed action will be taken? Or will the cry of the dying birds be ignored and followed by a Silent Summer?
Dorothy (Dottie) Reynolds, councilwomanBarnegat LightOctober 14, 2026
