NRCM Blog

Returning to Sea - by David Wilkins

Editor’s Note: Alewives are river herring, a term that also includes their close relatives the blueback herring and American shad. Alewives spend most of their life at sea. In early to mid-May, alewives leave the ocean, enter Maine's coastal rivers, and make their way upstream to spawning habitat in lakes and ponds, sometimes traveling more than 100 miles. In the summer and fall, the juveniles head back out to sea. Alewives are an important food source for bass, tuna, cod, haddock, halibut, rainbow trout, Bald Eagles, Osprey, otter, and many other wildlife. Historically, millions of alewives made their arrival, but by the twentieth century, fishing, dams, and pollution had taken their toll on sea-run fish, including alewives. Restoring populations of alewives and other herring may help other species in coastal ecosystems and are an important for the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine. NRCM has led efforts in key victories for sea-run fish, including alewives, including in the Kennebec River, where our work resulted in removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta in 1999. This past spring, 2.8 million returned to the river. But alewife runs still face challenges in other Maine rivers and streams. Find out more about what NRCM is doing to help Maine’s watersheds and the wildlife that depend upon them.

I’ve often wondered if the alewife’s defense may be their numbers and speed. The surviving offspring of these fish will stay together for their entire lives and may be joined by schools of other alewives and other species during their sojourn at sea. It is expected or hoped that as many as one percent of these fish will return to spawn in 2015.

The future for alewife is not a certainty and should not be assumed. Three principle problems plague these incredible fish. Access to spawning grounds, pollution or degraded water quality, and overfishing (primarily as by-catch in the offshore herring/mackerel fishery), are responsible for steep declines in their numbers in the last 20 or so years.

The run in Muscongus Brook and into Webber Pond was extirpated by 1970 or so as a result of the installation of a road culvert. Spawning adults could no longer gain entry into, nor pass through the length of this unnatural structure to reach the lake. The simple installation of a road culvert sadly ended this population, after having reproduced here for more than 10,000 years. 

The remains of mill dams also create spawning access problems here, although much stone removal work has been done in the last 10 years. Our Muscongus Brook alewife population continues today with the seasonal installation of a fish ladder at the culvert, and state stocking of spawning adults in the pond. We began stocking the pond in 2003, and returning adults arrived in June of 2007. They have continued each year since. Returning rates vary from about 2,000 to 5,000 fish each year. Given time and culvert removal, a restored Webber Pond may see 100,000 fish in the run.

Watch an 18-second video of the alewives swimming out to sea.

At high tide tonight I watched thousands of young alewife pour from the tea-colored fresh water into green salty Muscongus Harbor. A school had formed as far as I could see out toward the bay. This was their first taste of salt water, as they are an ocean fish, born from fresh water. This is in itself amazing. A loon dressed in its new winter plumage dove in the distance. A Herring Gull, waiting for my departure, watched me from a rock. Like seemingly endless sand in an hourglass, these small fish drained into the sea, oblivious to the gauntlet ahead. I try to remind myself that those that return will be survivors and the most fit to pass on their genes. I told myself that these special fish are here to feed everything, for the good of all wildlife. However, these thoughts did not quite feel like consolation enough to this worried parent watching them head out to sea.

David Wilkins is a sailor, boat builder, and naturalist living in Bremen, Maine. He studied wildlife biology at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Fly-fishing, fish watching, and bird watching are some of his pastimes. Early exposure to declining commercial fisheries has led David to become a staunch fisheries conservationist today.

For more about the alewife, read our Creature Feature.

Watch NRCM’s short video about the alewife run on the Sebasticook River (a tributary of the Kennebec).

Watch our short video celebrating the 10th anniversary of removal of the Edwards Dam.

All photographs in this post by and courtesy of David Wilkins. They may not be used without his permission.

Maine People and the Environment: Report from the Roundtable

More than 500 citizens from across the state poured into the Augusta Civic Center on January 20th to participate in the first public meeting with Governor LePage about the importance of environmental protection to Maine's economic and public health. A panel of 28 businesses, sportsmen, health professionals, religious leaders, and youth discussed how the laws that have cleaned up once heavily polluted rivers, have kept Maine's woods and fish stocks intact, have kept our landscapes protected and relatively pristine, and have cleaned up our air - and saved us money -- by conserving energy, are necessary and welcome to those who have chosen to set up businesses in Maine, have worked the land for generations, or visit here to enjoy our quality of life.

NRCM is proud to have sponsored this event with numerous partner organizations and to have seen so many members from the NRCM family across the state in attendance. We have shown once again that the people of Maine are deeply committed to environmental protections and are willing to stand up and fight for them. Please see the extensive news coverage here: http://www.nrcm.org/news.asp

We will soon be posting the remarks of the panelists, as well as video of the event, but today's snow slowed us down a bit. Check our website next week (www.nrcm.org) for more from the Roundtable.

Here are some of the remarks from the panelists, who we thank so much for participating in this event:

William Bennett, Pres. & CEO, of Oakhurst: "After all the cows that produce Oakhurst milk literally eat drink and breathe the Maine environment so it's in everyone's best interest to keep Maine's environment clean, safe and healthy."

Unity College student Deirdre Birbeck also had a chance to speak directly to the Governor. "It seems to me that my generation's future jobs will depend on careful stewarding of our natural resources."
 
“If our coastal waters are not clean, it is impossible for all commercial fishermen, not just clammers, to market the Maine brand,” said Chad Coffin, president of the Maine Clammers Association.

“Regulations aren’t perfect, and some may need fixing,” said Harry Dwyer, a licensed forester and logger who owns Ghost Dance Forestry in Fayette. “But regulations are not the enemy. They are an important tool” to protect resources for future generations.

Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth, a former Republican state senator who is chairman of Diversified Communications, a company with 200 employees, said many of the laws protecting Maine’s air, land and water were enacted by Republican-controlled legislatures responding to the industrial abuses of the 1960s and 1970s.

“Their implementation has from time to time caused frustration and even outrage,” Hildreth said. “But I submit to you that working on the regulations to make sure they are responsive to the plain intent of the statutes is a better way to go than gutting or repealing the laws.”

Corky Ellis, founder and Chairman of Kepware, a software company in Portland, says they could have moved to North Carolina or Texas with lower taxes and minimal environmental regulations, but they wanted to live in Maine. "Please bear in mind that many businesses like ours are here in Maine precisely because of the protected beauty and the conservation efforts of the past."

And MPBN's news story quoted Ernie Hilton, former chair of the Maine Board of Environmental Protection (read and listen to the full MPBN news story here):

Ernie Hilton is a lifelong Republican, an attorney and civil engineer from Madison who previously chaired Maine's Board of Environmental Protection, and whose wife chairs the Land Use Regulation Commission, or LURC.

Hilton says he's worried Maine's quality of place may be threatened as the new administration and Legislature look to relax environmental permitting and reuglations and do away with agencies such as LURC, which governs zoning and planning in Maine's North Woods.

"I'm concerned when I see, as I did yesterday, a list of some of the statutes which are pending before the Legislature dealing with shoreland zoning and with LURC, and it strikes me as being a race to the bottom approach to our environment," Hilton said.

Hilton says it's not environmental rules or regulations that are the biggest impediments to job creation in Maine but rather the high cost of health care. He points out that over the last eight years more than 10,000 permits by rule were issued for small projects, and $5 billion dollars worth of major projects permitted by the Department of Environmental Protection alone.