Setting the stage for fisheries recoveries

Tell us about the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

Anderson: The MCCF is a small nonprofit based in Stonington, Maine, founded about 16 years ago by Robin Alden, a very charismatic leader in marine resource management. The MCCF characterizes our work in three discreet but integrated initiatives: one on collaborative research, another on collaborative management, and a third on collaborative education. Intentionally, the word ‘collaborative’ is in everything that we do. It’s very similar to Manomet’s approach, where we realize that if we all work together and find the right partner institutions or individuals, we can probably get more done. The organization’s overall goal is to help sustain commercial fishing and the communities that depend on it in eastern Maine.

Why alewives?

Thalhauser: I work with species that either do or could potentially have some shared responsibility and co-ownership of the management of our natural resources. Alewives and clams are the two species in Maine with a formal structure where municipalities apply local knowledge to management which is shared with the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Alewives are a river herring species that spend most of their lives out in the open ocean migrating and commingling with Atlantic herring. They swim up and down the coast from the Carolinas to Canada, and then, like salmon, return to their home ponds to spawn and restart the cycle. They are an overfished species along with many other herring species and were also negatively affected by the blockage of the fish passages into their spawning grounds. Since they have site fidelity, meaning they return to the place they were born to spawn, their home pond is a critical, instinctual connection in their life cycle. We can’t put a dam in one place and expect them to swim to another pond to spawn.

Alewives are a depleted species, but one of the best things they have going for them is how resilient they are. You can remove one of these dams and stock the fishery, even at very low levels, and they’ll return. In places like the Penobscot, we’ve gone from almost zero fish to millions of fish in less than a decade. This success is one of the greatest assets this species has, as people can understand how actions put in place have had a tremendously positive impact on alewife populations. It’s a fishery on which you see immediate impacts. When we’re talking about groundfish, like cod, it could take decades for people to be able to see any impacts.

It simply takes boots on the ground to steward these fisheries and keep them coming back. That’s where the co-management piece comes in. In Maine, we’re lucky enough to have a system in place to incentivize that stewardship and get folks at the right scale working on bringing these populations back.

What is environmental DNA or eDNA and how are the MCCF and Manomet using this technology?

Thalhauser: A big unanswered question whenever you’re thinking about managing or harvesting a fishery is looking at the productivity of the system and saying, “With x-amount of fish spawning, how does that system look years later and how does productivity tie into food availability and habitat?” All those different factors make one pond able to produce a lot of fish with just a few adults going back and others being somewhat of a tightrope walk.

For adults, we count them as they enter the ponds by visually counting fish or in some systems, with the help of video or other technology. Counting juveniles in the pond is not so easy. We use a purse seine, a net that we circle and then purse up at the bottom to catch the fish. We do these at night when the juvenile alewives are all dispersed in the pond (they hide during the day to avoid predators). We’re starting to get density estimates of the juveniles compared to how many adults came back and are looking at that productivity.

eDNA is a new tool for fisheries research and management. It started as a presence versus absence tool, wherein you could take a sample of water, analyze it, and detect the DNA of certain species using that water. You could also learn about whatever else was using that area, from frogs and other aquatic life to plant debris, and even people. This technology has advanced to the point of being able to see how genetic material has changed over time, and we can even see if the numbers of river herring have increased or decreased in an area.

To be effective with co-management, you’ve got to know what’s happening at the ground level. The use of eDNA could be a great tool to better estimate the number of fish returning to an area and better understand what local populations look like.

Manomet’s Anne Hayden is also looking at how this tool can be used; we worked together to design a monitoring program and collect samples. After I go out to purse seine and sample ponds, Anne and I will go out in the canoe and sample those same places, so we can compare the findings.

What does the future of fisheries look like?

Anderson: I’m excited about ecosystem-based fisheries management. In its simplest form, we can better manage how we fish and how we control fish populations. We need to think about more than one species at a time. We should think of species as players in an ecosystem that interact with one another. Each species interacts with the ecosystem uniquely, such as when temperature or acidification change; many species may react similarly, others may react differently. We also try to think about how we can better understand the interactions of species with their environment and one another, as well as humans and how we are part of that ecosystem. It ends up becoming pretty complicated.

It’s fascinating to think and talk about, but it’s very hard to study, because each one of those threads you pull, you find it pulls another one, and then it pulls another one. It’s going to take a lot of information, a lot of talent, and information management, modeling, maybe even artificial intelligence, eventually.

How does ecosystem-based fisheries management tie into the work that Manomet and MCCF are doing?

Anderson: Reports about ecosystem-based fisheries management all say is that you have to have a place where you can start defining limitations on the questions you’re asking. And so, this part of Eastern Maine has a unique oceanographic feature: the Eastern Maine Coastal Current. It comes down from Canada and the Bay of Fundy and gyres off at Penobscot Bay. We see that almost none of that water ends up in Casco Bay to the west. It’s like entirely different water from the coast in Casco Bay. So, that current defines the place.

I remember when Robin Alden called me and said that NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency) finally acknowledged that the Gulf of Maine isn’t one big bathtub. Robin got the state and the federal government scientists to agree to use this place and ask questions about the research we need to do across the spectrum; biology, ecology, social science, and economics. We needed to gather this information to figure out the indicators, metrics, and benchmarks by which we would know where the change is happening, such as how species are being affected and where markets drive decision-making in unsustainable ways.

The beginning of that exploration has to be learning everything we can about these communities. We are currently getting this network going, which was slowed down this year by COVID. But, we wanted to start with first going into communities and asking people questions to get to know their values and concerns from where they live, without bringing scientists into the conversation, yet.

When we begin to include the scientists, they aren’t just an expert in the room, they are now part of a community conversation, forcing communities to put their assumptions aside. We think that’s the best way to get a long-term commitment from local people to be part of this.

Thalhauser: This management style is about partnership, which is a common theme I think everyone in the Downeast Fisheries Partnership holds dear. The only way we’re going to make progress in our efforts is to ensure that the right partners are working together, whether it’s an economic organization, a policy organization, a research entity, or the fishery’s managers. I think that’s something that Manomet focuses on; making the connections between research and management, and stakeholders and fishers, to make sure impact is greatest. You lose capacity when you drop any of those key pieces. Our approach has worked and it’s what our organizations—Manomet and the MCCF—have focused on.

Just a few years ago, river herring runs in Maine were estimated to be at 5% of their historic levels. With fish passage projects large and small either completed or in the works, this critical species is making a comeback. The work done by Manomet and MCCF is building local stewardship capacity so that these runs are sustained for future generations of both wildlife and fishermen. It isn’t enough to remove a dam or install a fishway; runs must be monitored and fish passage maintained, activities best undertaken by local stakeholders who intimately know their lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams.

In 2019, Manomet and its partners successfully secured approval for three new runs, creating incentives for harvesters and their communities to protect these passageways. Research on these and other runs will contribute to the understanding of river herring population dynamics. Connecting researchers, NGOs, and communities is a winning strategy for ensuring that river herring restoration, and its many benefits for wildlife, coastal food webs and fishermen, continues. The goal is to expand this work by building scientific knowledge, local capacity, and river herring abundance in several communities up and down the coast. Recovery of river herring runs to historic levels is unlikely due to permanent habitat loss, but, reaching 50% recovery is within reach and would help to build much-needed community and fishery resilience.