Hold a single alewife or blueback herring in your hand, and
you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Silvery and skinny, these so-called
“forage fish” are often only as long as a cell phone. Impressive specimens
might reach the size of a flip flop.
But if you head to certain parts of New England in the
spring, you’ll quickly discover that whatever these fish lack in stature, they surely
make up for in tenacity, resiliency and showmanship. For centuries, people have
crowded certain stream banks to watch — and catch — these little fish as they charge
upstream, often in glittering schools ten thousand strong.
"There’s nothing in the world like seeing this,” says Deb
Wilson, who helps lead a massive community effort to restore a 200-year-old
fish ladder in the village of Damariscotta Mills, Maine. “It's almost gleeful,
the way they just zip up through the water. Everybody thinks they’re
struggling, but they’re not. They’re full of energy.”
Alewives, a type of river herring, swim toward a 200-year-old fish ladder in the village of Damariscotta Mills, Maine. | Credit: Matt Winter
With the support of the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation, Wilson and her colleagues are putting the finishing touches on the restoration
project. A NFWF grant enabled the town add smooth, natural stone surfaces to
the 1,500-foot, man-made passage, an enhancement that protects the herring as
they scramble up the 42-foot vertical climb.
The herring, it seems, approve of the upgrades. Over the
past few years, more and more silver fish have climbed through the center of
the village, leaping up through a series of 68 pools and eventually arriving at
their spawning grounds in Damariscotta Lake. Their numbers often peak during
the village’s annual Fish Festival in May, when thousands of local and visitors
from around the world swamp the tiny town to revel in one of the nature’s most
impressive spectacles.
An all-American fish
Alewives and blueback herring, similar species collectively
referred to as “river herring,” are born in freshwater but spend most of their
lives at sea. Every spring, adults make their way from offshore waters into coastal
estuaries from New England through the Carolinas. Hard-wired to advance
upstream to spawn, river herring run up freshwater rivers, launching through
rapids and over rocks, funneling by the thousands into smaller and smaller
streams.
The herring are bound for inland lakes, where they gather in
massive spawning aggregations. Once completing this critical mission, they head
back to sea, falling backward along the same route with their heads still pointed
into the current. Months later, in the summer and fall, their offspring will
make the same journey to the ocean.
While at sea, river herring play a key role in the marine
food web, supporting commercially and recreationally important species such as
tuna, mackerel and billfish. Their push inland each spring sends a massive pulse
of life through coastal ecosystems, historically reaching more than 100 miles
inland. Eagles, ospreys, herons, striped bass, bluefish, flounder and a host of
other animals coming off a hard winter depend on the nutritional boost provided
by these water-borne packets of protein.
Children wear herring-themes shirts at a festival and fish-ladder fundraiser in Damariscotta Mills | Credit: Matt Winter
This annual journey also pumps waves of fish through the
hearts of many human communities in the Northeast. The resulting bonds between
herring and human reach back through time, from modern day fish-run festivals
to the smokehouses of the early 20th century and subsistence fisheries
of early European settlers and Native Americans.
“Even when it was about food, it was always a community
activity,” says Jeffrey Pierce, executive director of the Alewife Harvesters of
Maine. “It just made more sense for people to work together to get the fish. So
people came from all over to these spring runs, and they got to find out what
happened over the winter, who died and who was born — that kind of thing."
This streamside comradery lives on in Maine, with lobstermen
still congregating each spring at the state’s remaining runs to catch their
allotment of river herring – which many say make the best baits for lobster
traps.
“You might see 50 guys standing around and talking to each
other, seeing how the winter went,” Pierce says. “They’ll talk about fishing,
but they’re also talking about their kids’ soccer games and everything else.”
Management of river herring has varied widely over the
centuries, and New England's history is peppered with conflicts that arose when
one community’s dam building or fishing activities disrupted the run of herring
to other towns. Some runs were “owned” by individuals, while other runs were
managed by towns. Some New England communities built special fish ladders that
diverted massive numbers of herring from natural streams into holding pools,
where they could be more easily dip-netted.
Teachers and school children watch thousands of river herring climb the fish ladder, a series of manmade pools rising through the middle of the town. | Credit: Matt Winter
NFWF supported an effort to restore and improve this fish ladder running through a small town in Maine. | Credit: Matt Winter
So it went in Damariscotta Mills. Settled in 1729, this
picturesque community in coastal Maine originally operated a saw mill between
Damariscotta Lake and the tidal headwaters of the Damariscotta River. The mill blocked
river herring from reaching the lake, and by the 1740s, local leaders who
recognized the herring’s importance were calling for a solution. By 1807, a
“new stream” had been built around the mill.
This man-made run at Damariscotta Mills funneled massive
numbers of fish right through the heart of the village, providing an ideal
platform for more than two centuries of subsistence and commercial harvest of
river herring. Generations of families were tied to the harvest in one way or
another, whether through dip-netting, working in fish houses and smoke houses,
or by simply enjoying the spectacle.
Some of the herring were destined for smokehouses and local dinner
plates. Others were transported to the coast for lobster bait. Countless others
were salted, stored in barrels and shipped overseas as food.
By the mid-20th century, the river herring’s close
association with people had taken a heavy toll. Overfishing, the construction
of dams, pollution and bycatch in offshore trawl fisheries had combined to
decimate the once-mighty runs. By 2008, the river herring were in real trouble,
with declines of more than 95 percent since the mid-1980s.
NFWF’s River Herring
Program
In 2009, with the backing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NFWF launched
a 10-year River Herring Program aimed at achieving a 300-percent increase
in abundance in key rivers on the East Coast.
NFWF and a wide array of partners and grant recipients from
Maine through South Carolina began to focus on four key strategies:
Restoring access to and improving management of key
spawning and nursery habitats
Promoting sustainable river herring fisheries in
key rivers
Determining and reducing bycatch of river
herring in ocean fisheries
Implementing stock assessments and conducting
genetic analysis of river herring
NFWF grants helped scientists at the University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth complete a survey of river herring bycatch in ocean
fisheries, and then develop and implemented a bycatch avoidance system. Working
with willing commercial trawl captains, researchers pinpoint hotspots of river
herring bycatch so the fleet can steer clear, thereby avoiding possible fishing
closures.
“To the captains, the bycatch seemed
random and intermittent,” says Pierce, whose group helped rally support for the
program. “But in reality, a couple of bad tows could wipe out a town’s entire
run. When you talk to them about that, they get it.
A boy watched river herring climb the fish ladder in Damariscotta Mills. | Credit: Matt Winter
Alewives circle in one of the fish ladder pools, preparing to leap up to the next pool on their way to spawn in a freshwater lake. The fish eventually will fall back down the fish ladder and return to the sea. | Credit: Matt Winter
“So now, if a boat gets into a
hotspot, and they’re getting a high amount of bycatch in their first tow, they
call it in and it gets marked on this grid system. Then the fleet avoids that
area for a couple of days. It’s really
been a great program.
“Some of the fishermen don’t like
it, but most agree with it. They know it’s in their best interests, and the
fish’s best interests. As commercial fishermen, if we don’t work with our
managers, our scientists and other fisheries, we’re all going to be closed.”
In the Chesapeake Bay, where very little was known about
river herring populations, NFWF grants enabled scientists with the Smithsonian
Environmental Research Center to deploy state-of-the-art, multi-beam sonar
units that “filmed” the passage of fish through murky tributaries of the bay.
“This type of sonar technology was really probably the only
way to get good estimates on spawning run sizes,” says Matthew Ogburn, a
Smithsonian research associate working on the project. “With traditional methods
like netting and electrofishing, it’s hard to be out there sampling enough, especially
considering the periodic timing of the run.
“There are huge pulses of fish over very short time periods,
and that’s very important in counting the run. On the Choptank River, in our
first year, there was a run that was probably 300,000 to 400,000 fish. About 100,000
came by in just four hours, another 100,000 in a couple of hours the next day.
The rest of the fish were spread out over a month and a half.
“Having the sonar out there, recording 24-7, allows us to
capture that.”
NFWF’s River Herring Program has invested
more than $5 million through 37 grants.
With grantee matches of more than $4.7 million, the program has generated a
total of approximately $8 million for river herring conservation.
These efforts are paying off; river herring populations have
begun to climb again in New England.
This remarkable story of resilience and recovery is
celebrated at Damariscotta Mills every spring, when the famed fish ladder is
once again paved in silver.
"We went from getting 80,000 a few years ago to over a
million,” says Deb Wilson, the fish-ladder restoration director. “I’ve never
seen anything like it. We’ll watch these fish come up into the bay, circle
around in huge pods, then head up under a railroad bridge and start up the run.
“Sometimes someone who hasn’t
seen it before will look down and say, ‘I can’t see any fish -- where are the
fish?’ It's because all they're seeing is fish. They can’t differentiate
between water and fish, there are so many.
“It’s a sight to see.”