The following was copied from the VSO ListServe.  It addresses an imminent
danger to many bird species along the Atlantic Seaboard.

To: ; 
Subject: [Va-bird] Chesapeake Wildlife in Balance

OP/ED written by Bryan Watts as it appeared in Richmond Times Dispatch
Oct,19,2011
(http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/oct/19/tdopin02-watts-chesapea
ke-wildlife-in-the-balance-ar-1392188/)

In November, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) will
decide on the path forward for managing the Atlantic menhaden fishery. At
issue is whether to increase target population levels, which would
effectively reduce commercial harvests of menhaden. At risk are populations
of birds and other wildlife enjoyed by millions of residents throughout the
tidal reach of the Chesapeake Bay.

Menhaden, often called the "most important fish in the sea," are the energy
changers of bay waters. They filter plankton, converting it into oil-rich
tissues and making this vast energy reserve available to consumers higher up
on the food chain. Demand for this energy-rich oil is at the heart of the
conflict between commercial menhaden fisheries on the Atlantic Coast and
many recreational anglers who claim that menhaden harvest levels have
greatly compromised the health of striped bass and other prized species that
depend on menhaden for food.

But striped bass and commercial harvesters are not the only ones chasing
menhaden. Menhaden are critical prey for many of our bird populations as
well, including bald eagles, osprey, brown pelicans, royal terns, and common
loons - species that provide the sights and sounds of the visible living
fabric that we identify with the Chesapeake Bay experience.

The current ASMFC regulation allows for harvests down to 8 percent of the
projected unfished population (or conversely, catching up to 92 percent of
all menhaden in the bay and ocean). The population is technically classified
as overharvested if it is driven below the 8 percent threshold. Even with
this alarmingly generous threshold, a recent scientific assessment has
indicated that menhaden have been overfished in 32 of the past 54 years.
Allowing menhaden stocks to be harvested to such low levels has implications
for other consumer communities.

In 1971, during the height of the DDT era, Bob Kennedy worked with breeding
osprey in Mobjack Bay as a graduate student at the College of William and
Mary under Mitchell Byrd. Kennedy determined that osprey pairs were
producing chicks at a rate well below that needed to maintain the
population, largely because DDT in their system made their eggshells too
thin to be viable. Only one in four eggs hatched due to DDT contamination,
but of the chicks that hatched, nearly eight of 10 survived to fledge.

During the next few decades, three additional William and Mary graduate
students would work with osprey in Mobjack Bay and provide a portrait of a
changing population. The United States ultimately banned DDT, and by the
early 1980s osprey pairs were producing more than twice as many chicks as in
the early 1970s, and their population was growing.

Surprisingly, however, by 2006 osprey productivity in Mobjack Bay had
declined again back to levels not seen since the DDT era. This time the
underlying cause had changed.

More than 35 years after DDT, graduate student Andy Glass found that nine of
every 10 eggs hatched, but only four of every 10 chicks survived to fledge.
Chicks were hatching, but they were starving in the nest.

Why? In the 1970s adult osprey were delivering nearly three times more fish
to nestlings than in 2006. In the 1980s during the period of highest
productivity, more than 70 percent of the fish delivered to nests were
menhaden. By 2006 menhaden represented less than 27 percent of the diet.
None of the other fish species in the osprey's diet are equivalent to
menhaden in energy content. So the adults were providing fewer fish to their
chicks, and the fish were of poorer quality.

Significantly, over the same four decades, the menhaden population as
measured by haul seines in Maryland had declined by more than 90 percent.

What is now before the ASMFC are proposals to make no change, as well as one
to increase the population threshold from 8 percent to 15 percent of
unfished levels. Though that would represent a modest change, it would be a
welcome movement toward considering the needs of fish, birds, marine mammals
and the broader bay ecosystem.

The Chesapeake Bay is a tremendous and shared resource. We all have a voice
in how that resource should be used for the highest public good. Let ASMFC
hear your voice.


Bryan D. Watts is Mitchell A. Byrd Professor of Conservation Biology and
director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William
and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University. Contact him at 
Public comments on proposed changes in harvest limits are being accepted by
the commission through Nov. 2. Express your view by visiting
http://www.asmfc.org/.


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