Restoring sea run fish to the Gulf of Maine

Jeanne O'Rourke | May 30, 2019 | Newsletters

Anne Hayden

Senior Fisheries Program Manager

On a recent sunny Saturday, a crowd of 300 people enjoyed the spectacle of alewives making their way up a tributary of the Bagaduce River to Pierce’s Pond in Penobscot, a community on the shores of Maine’s Penobscot Bay. Kids and adults alike marveled at the powerful instinct that drives the fish to work their way upstream, surmounting each rise against the flow of the stream as it tumbles down to the sea. Students from the local middle school waded in the stream for a close up look at the fish, listening as their teacher explained the life cycle of alewives, a sea run fish that lives in the ocean and spawns in freshwater. Ospreys and eagles circled overhead, keeping an eye out for an opportunity to snatch a meal from the teeming waters.

But it hasn’t always been so. The event that drew crowds to this place was a celebration, not just of a natural phenomenon, but of the fact that access for fish to Pierce’s Pond is newly restored; after much hard work, led by a local fisherman, fish can once again make their way to the pond after years of being blocked.

This river restoration story is one of several chronicled in a new report, Up and Up: River Herring in Eastern Maine. Anne Hayden, Senior Fisheries Program Manager, is the lead author; the report was prepared for the Downeast Fisheries Partnership and is posted on the Manomet website. Alewives, blueback herring, and shad are known collectively as river herring. These fish, especially the rapidly expanding numbers of juveniles that find their way to the sea each summer and fall, are an important source of forage for groundfish, such as cod and haddock. Bringing back alewives and other river herring is a key strategy for rebuilding groundfish populations.

The report details the status of river herring runs in eastern Maine and makes the case for restoration in rivers and streams large and small. Eastern Maine is the most fisheries-dependent place on the eastern seaboard. The goal of the Downeast Fisheries Partnership is to diversify fisheries in order to reduce the region’s current dependence on the lobster fishery, which is sustainably managed but at risk from climate impacts. Fisheries for alewives, which are prized as a smoked fish product and for lobster bait, and for groundfish, which once supported thriving coastal communities in eastern Maine, will provide opportunities for fishermen to diversify their harvests. The Partnership is supporting locally driven restoration and participatory management where fishermen have a stake in the future of their fisheries and can apply their local knowledge to sustaining the resource.

Rachel Gorich helped write the report. At the time a student at the University of Maine at Machias, Rachel is now Assistant Hatchery Manager at the Downeast Salmon Federation’s Peter Gray Hatchery in East Machias, Maine.

Anne and the Manomet fisheries team are now building on this work in eastern Maine with a new project that expands the focus of river herring restoration to the larger Gulf of Maine. They are exploring research, past and ongoing, on the ecological impacts of river herring restoration. One goal is to identify tools that communities can use to estimate both upstream migration of adults in the spring and, more challenging but more significant ecologically, the downstream migration of juveniles in the fall. This information will help communities identify the current status of their river herring resource as well as sustainable harvest levels.

A second goal is to understand how river herring restoration efforts collectively are affecting the Gulf of Maine’s coastal food webs. Various studies are beginning to address the issue: analysis of stomach contents of birds and fish; analysis of terrestrially derived carbon, such as from juvenile river herring, in marine fish and other wildlife; and sonar tracking of juvenile river herring migration and predator-prey interactions. This Gulf-scale synthesis will be precedent-setting and help clarify the role of river herring in coastal food webs, and identify research gaps and monitoring required to assess our progress in restoring this critical component of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem. River herring populations around the Gulf are likely no more than 10% of their historic levels – lots of room to grow

Karon Wierman

Fisheries restoration is part of Manomet’s work, but for at least one staff member it is also an avocation. Karon Wierman, Manomet’s Comptroller, serves on the board of the Jones River Watershed Association which is working to remove the Elm Street dam in Kingston, Mass. According to Karon, “This once useful dam is now broken and decaying, yet still stands, inhibiting the natural flow of the river. It is time for it to go. We want to see the fish get to Silver Lake for the first time in more than 100 years. So, yes, we need permits and contracts, and there are politics and doubts. But in the end, this is the right thing to do, so we are doing it.”

Thank you Karon and your fellow volunteers in communities all along the coast of the Gulf of Maine. Your work to restore fish passage is not only making a difference in your communities, but also to the Gulf of Maine ecosystem. You inspire us!

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