Alewife Restoration on Maine Rivers Making Strides

by Mike Crowe

Alewife stocks have been declining in Maine for years, but they have been crashing in other Atlantic coast states. Maine has maintained more open access to spawning areas for alewives (also known as river herring), which has made the difference between Maine’s stocks and those in other states.

Nonetheless, many of the fishways around dammed rivers have fallen apart and access for alewives has declined. Some alewife harvesters carried alewives around dams to spawning areas in lakes. Two-inch-long young-of-the-year fingerlings faced turbines in those dams on the way downstream.

Alewives pouring out of Maine rivers have been a valued resource for centuries. Lobstermen prized alewives for bait. Smoked alewives were commonly consumed along the Atlantic Coast. Smoking preserved them in the days before refrigeration. Historically, young alewives pouring out of Maine rivers have been a critically important prey fish for groundfish, in particular cod, in the Gulf of Maine. The restoration of alewife stocks could be an important bait resource as bait prices rise and lobstermen are forced to use frozen imports. Maine recently completed a study of imported baits, recommending some not be used because they may present an environmental biohazard to the Gulf of Maine.

Dwayne Shaw from the Downeast Salmon Federation said alewife research has enabled those working with restoration efforts to measure the numbers of alewives returning to rivers where dams have been removed and fishways rebuilt or added, and to also determine which groundfish have been feeding on alewives. Scientists can track the particular alewife carbon signature they find in groundfish.

“The dramatically reduced alewife populations coming out of Maine rivers is a big piece of the decline of groundfish puzzle,” said Shaw. Alewives were an important source of protein for groundfish.

Volunteer monitoring has grown in popularity. Using standard scientific protocols, groups ranging from a half dozen to 100 volunteers count alewives in the spring. At the base of dams in a narrow passage around a dam, a white background material is laid on the bottom. Alewives are counted as they swim over the white area. Karen Bieluch, a Dartmouth College scientist involved in alewife restoration said, “Some runs in Massachusetts and Maine have enough volunteers to count fish for 10 minutes every hour or two. While others runs, in Maine in particular, have fewer volunteers and may ask volunteers to count for 30 minutes during a four-hour block. From what I learned during interviews, volunteers count between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., seven days a week.”

Bieluch said a survey of 176 citizen volunteers participating in Maine and Massachusetts counting programs showed that the top three reasons volunteers participate in these programs are because: 1) they are concerned with the health of the local ecosystem; 2) to help protect nature, generally, and 3) to improve river herring management. Also, 38 percent of respondents reported that they volunteer to help support local fishermen and fisherwomen.

Alewife harvesters have long been some of the most dedicated alewife resource stewards in Maine. Bieluch recalled asking an alewife harvester if he would work with others to restore the alewives. He responded, “I’d work with the devil himself to help these fish.” The volunteer monitoring data is being used to support decisions in local restoration efforts. State agencies in Maine may use this data in the future. They currently use harvester-collected data to determine changes in a particular alewife run. More requests are coming in from volunteers who want to be involved in this type of citizen science.

Scientists looking at current baselines for alewife and other stocks have begun to project what alewife productivity might be based in part on what it had been in the more distant past. Some of the restoration figures they have seen already suggest restored alewife habitat could quickly return to productivity levels not seen for a century.

Some of the earliest law in the colony of Massachusetts was on fishways. Rivers dammed for water wheel powered grist and sawmills blocked fish passage. In his book “Alewife,” Doug Watts writes that law related to alewives goes back to the Magna Carta. There are records of tribal leaders going to Augusta and Massachusetts before Maine was a state to lobby for fishways at dams. Dam building boomed in the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s. In the late 1800s there was another boom in electricity-generating dam building. The lifeline for alewives was being closed off. Many of those who spoke out about the disregard for this important fish were ignored or trumped by the influence of mill owners and power companies.

As recently as 25 years ago, Bangor Hydro went to federal court to avoid building a fishway at its dam on the Union River in Ellsworth, Maine. The power company won on a technicality, said Shaw. That dam was built in 1907. There was no fishway, but it had a trap at the base of the falls. Alewives were caught there and brought in a tank truck 10 miles to Graham Lake where they had previously gone in their ancient passage. However, only a small percentage were trapped this way. After 83 years of blocked passage only a tiny percentage of what once came up the Union River arrived in 1990. The power company balked at the cost of adding a fishway for a public resource. Critics say the cost to the public of the blocked alewife resource was many multiples of the cost of a fishway when amortized with the inclusion of lost prey fish, groundfish, bait fish and human food security over decades and centuries.

This scenario has played out in hundreds of waterways along the Atlantic coast. But now with the recognition of critical changes in habitat for many species in the Gulf of Maine, restoration advocates are gaining ground, at least in Maine. There are 18 Maine streams where alewives can be harvested because they have an active management and stewardship plan in place, said Claire Enterline at the Maine DMR. There are also about 25 rivers and streams with restoration plans in progress between Kittery and Eastport, Maine. These plans include either dam removal or fishway construction or restoration and involve local, state and/or federal authorities.

Aggregate alewife fishway count data show a steady increase for the Kennebec, Androscoggin, Sabasticook and Penobscot rivers. Before and after data on the Flanders Stream restoration in Franklin showed a rapid response to restoration efforts.

Shaw said the alewife responds better to restoration efforts than Atlantic salmon. Maine, with its large number of rivers, streams and lakes, may have the most potential for being the biggest success story in restoring alewives as prey, bait and human food resource.

The town of Benton, just above Waterville, has an annual alewife festival. The “Eating With The Alewives” dinner is scheduled this year for Friday, May 15, at the Benton Grange Hall, 29 River Road, Benton. The Downeast Salmon Federation sponsors a Smoked Alewife Cookout, road race and “Bloater Bash” on May 9 in East Machias. From U.S. Route 1 in East Machias, take Route 191 south, the road to Cutler. The festival is held off just off Route 191, a short distance from Route 1.