Alewife Rescue Squad

A proverb:

Under a hot summer sun, the beach is strewn with seastars stranded by the tide.  Soon, they will die from the heat.  A boy starts at one end of the beach, and slowly but surely moves one seastar at a time back to the water.  A man watches him, unimpressed.  As the boy picks up yet another seastar, the man walk up to him and says "Why are you wasting your time, boy?  You can't possibly save all these seastars.  All your work won't make any difference because most of them will die anyways."  The boy, wise beyond his years and still fresh with optimism, replies "Maybe I can't save them all, but to this particular seastar, I'm making all the difference in the world."

In the face of all the environmental problems of our day and age, this is a great lesson to us. Small actions can make a big difference, if we all make good decisions.  And last Saturday, I saw the proverb in action.

We were down in Massachusetts, so Damon could run a road race on Saturday, and I could run my marathon Sunday.  Between the two races, we did a bit of exploring.  Southeastern Mass is near and dear to our hearts, as we both lived there for a time (and in fact met there!).  We were driving through Middleborough, and passed Oliver Mill Park, where long ago I'd seen my first American eel.  It was a gorgeous day; the sun was out; and it felt like the start to a nice warm stretch.  "Wanna check it out?' asked Damon, noting the many cars in the parking lot.

"Sure," I replied. Is he kidding?  Besides, the dog loves a good walk.

The park on the Nemasket River is the site of an old mill, so common in this part of our country.  These mills brought prosperity to New England, but they also devastated the anadromous fish that plied coastal rivers for millenia.  Often, no provision was made for fish to pass upstream and downstream, so they had no way to reproduce and died out quickly.  Some mills put in fish ladders, some of which were successful in making passage possible, some of which were poorly engineered and did little good.

This site has an amazing fish ladder, with water cascading down a series of steps that fish can shoot up and over.  The water's been very cold in Maine, pushing the migration back*, but in Mass, the water was thick with alewives.  We stood transfixed, watching small schools of fish climb each rung.  Once they were over the ladder, they shot upstream.  Below the dam, there were plenty of gulls waiting for a shot at some protein, as is typical at fish ladders up and down the coast.

The fish ladder, which was teeming with alewives.

Gulls below the dam, waiting for a meal.

Along with the fish ladder, the park has the remnants of dams from its industrial past.  These are impassable for fish, but they don't know it.  They gather below the dams, rushing as far as they can upstream, only to be tossed and tumbled in the rapids under the dam.  These are the lost souls of the alewives, who aren't likely to join their counterparts upstream.

Can you see them all in there?  They'd never get over that dam without help!

The day we visited, though, a good Samaritan was watching over some of these lost fish.  Pants rolled up, barefoot, a boy was standing below the dam, searching through the waters with his hands, looking for fish in need of a boost.  It was tough work, and he struggled to keep his foot hold in the rushing water.  But he was successful -- every once in a while, he'd pull out a fish and toss it over the dam.  He had an audience, and with each fish, they'd applaud and cheer.  His enthusiasm was contagious, and soon he had his little brother helping out, and eventually some adults just had to get in and get their hands on some fish.  Maybe they only helped a dozen or so fish.  Not much in the grand scheme of things, it might not seem like much.  But it was enough to make all the difference in the world for those particular fish.

Searching for herring.

The audience waits with baited breath.

Success!  Nice job.

The grownups can't resist.  Notice the fish tumbling in the backwash.

The herring rescue team deploys.

More luck!

Swim little fishies!  Swim if you can -- and they swam and they swam right over the dam!

* I just learned they're here!  Today's my day to go count too!  Woohoo!

What do these cormorants and I have in common?

Cormorants below the Brunswick Hydro dam.  Maybe they're just getting together for a beer.

We're both waiting for alewives.  I'm signed up to count alewives at the Nequasset Fish Ladder, and all last month I was eagerly anticipating standing up on the fish ladder, in the warm spring sun, counting the little fishies as they struggled up the ladder.  It was going to be a sign that spring was underway and winter was over.

Well, that's not what's going on in Maine this year.  Not only were the spring peepers late; the birds reluctant; the plants slow to bud (it's still pretty brown here) -- the alewives are biding their time as well.  On Monday (the day of my scheduled gig at the ladder), I got an email saying no fish were in sight, so counting hasn't started.  Apparently, the fish usually arrive when the water temperature reaches 57, and we're only at 50.  Too cold for the sensibilities of a river herring.  That's okay, it's giving the Bath Water District time to fix up the ladder for them.

So, it'll be at least another week until I get to check out the ladder and enjoy one of the greatest migrations on earth.  Until then, the spring rainwater and snow melt will continue to roar over the Brunswick Hydro dam, and I'll keep anticipating spring.

The Brunswick fish ladder.  No fish here yet either.

This is a HUGE amount of water for these rapids.  All going to the Gulf of Maine -- bringing high productivity with it.

Who wants to be a marine biologist?

Wanna try your hand at science?  Help out a land trust (the Ocean Lover's favorite type of non-profit)? Spend a few hours outside?  What's that?  YOU want to do it?

Great!  Because despite current conditions and indications to the contrary, the earth is moving around the sun, our hemisphere is starting to get more direct radiation, and spring is about to arrive (gal-dangit, it better). With it will come some of the greatest migrations on earth -- whales (from as far as the Caribbean), sandpipers (passing through as they fly from South America to the Arctic tundra), and the anadromous fish that live in Maine's fresh waters for part of their lives.  This is National Geo worthy -- and you can have a front row seat.

The Kennebec Estuary Land Trust (KELT), has protected almost 1000 acres on the Midcoast, and they want you.  KELT worked with the Bath Water District starting in 2010 to restore the fish ladder from the Kennebec via Nequasset Brook to Nequasset Lake, prime spawning habitat for alewives. Later this year, the ladder is getting a major refit, expected to make passage for fish easier and maintenance of the ladder less labor intensive.  Every year, KELT recruits dozens of volunteers to count how many alewives climb the ladder.

Swimming upstream!  Gotta make me some babies!  Credit: Jerry Prezioso, NEFSC/NOAA

I'm psyched to help out.  Volunteering involves choosing a 2 hour shift, and within that 2 hours, doing two 10 minute counts of fish, as well as collecting associated data such as temperature and the presence of predators (if you're a bird watcher, this part will thrill you).

Alewives were part of the enormous biomass our ancestors found when they arrived in Maine.  Every river would have been jam-packed with alewives in spring, as they ran up the rivers to spawn.  Any number of species relied on this bolus of protein during the migration -- gulls, ospreys, and eagles; raccoon, fox and turtles; and marine predators like cod and even whales.  (Dogs?  Probably.)  People relied on the alewife run too -- smoked alewives were an important source of nutrition (especially for the poor), and they were commonly used as bait for lobstering.  Everything eats alewives.  Everything.

Unfortunately, most of the alewife runs in Maine are a shadow of their former self.  Dams have blocked passage of alewives (and many other anadromous fish) along almost all of Maine's rivers. But this is a new era.  Recent efforts to eliminate barriers to fish passage have succeeded in opening the St Croix watershed (where the alewife run was reduced to just 900 fish at one point) and much of the Kennebec, plus smaller watersheds around the state -- like the Nequasset Dam.  It's an exciting time to be an alewife!

I know you're chomping at the bit to sign up to volunteer -- aren't you?  How can you resist?  Go to the KELT website and follow the link for the 2014 Fish Count.  Mark it on your calendar and dream about being out in the spring sun cheering these small heroes on their way up the ladder.  Maybe I'll see you there.



*Want to see alewives but don't think you can volunteer?  There are two other great places to see them. The Damariscotta Mills fish ladder is probably the most amazing place (going to their Alewife Festival on Memorial Day weekend will make it even more fun), and you can check out the fish ladder at the Brunswick Hydro Dam (on the Androscoggin).  Alewives start running when the water reaches 57 degrees, so May is probably a good time to visit.