Alewives

"The last time alewives made the 70-mile journey from the ocean to China Lake in central Maine, the American Revolution had just come to an end in 1783. Since then, the sea run fish, also known as river herring, have been blocked from their historic spawning grounds by a series of dams . . . [A newly constructed] fishway serves as a sort of ladder for migratory fish, a structure with water on the side of the dam that helps them do what their driving instincts tell them: navigate around the obstruction and get to the lake to spawn . . . ‘I know these fish have been waiting 200 years to get up to China Lake and we're not going to delay them any further.’"

- Gov. Janet Mills

". . . increasing population coupled with unusual spring weather and an early migration up the lake have resulted in dead fish on the coast between Muskegon and the Straits of Mackinac."

"Since 2006 the [Essex Hydro dam] has included a complex structure of steel beams, channels, gears, and cables, to help lift alewives over the dam, so they can get upriver to spawn. It’s a symbol of the work being done in Maine to encourage a comeback by the remarkable little fish. Fisheries biologists call alewives a 'keystone species,' meaning they support many other living creatures in nature’s food chain . . . 'Megafauna like whales and tuna fish, and cod and haddock will all feed on this species in abundance. Black ducks even'"

- Nate Gray, a biologist for the Maine Department of Marine Resources

"What has happened in the decade since the crash of Lake Huron's two dominant species — invasive Atlantic alewives and the giant Pacific salmon planted to gobble them up — is a remarkable story of nature's resilience. Efforts by lake managers to sustain the invasive alewives to keep the salmon fishing rolling had, for decades, pushed native species to the fringes. But when the alewife dwindled and the salmon followed, there was an almost instant surge in native lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, chubs and emerald shiners."

"While appealing, the clarity comes at a significant cost to wildlife. In filtering the lake, the mussels have decimated the phytoplankton, a single-celled, green algae that serves as the base of the food chain. For much of the past decade, prey fish, like alewives, have remained at historic lows, prompting state managers to scale back the annual stocks of prized predators, such as king salmon."

“A few days after a long-abandoned industrial dam was removed from the mouth of a Hudson River tributary this spring, hundreds of river herring [alewives and American shad] swarmed up into the shallow waters to spawn for the first time in 85 years.”

"Experts say the recent removal of key dams in Maine rivers could increase the alewife population by five times, allowing the fish to outgrow their supporting role as bait fish and possibly even rival the lobster as one of Maine’s premiere natural resources."

"If there aren’t enough alewives to both reproduce and feed the salmon, each species will collapse. That’s what happened over the past five years in Lake Huron, where alewives and the Chinook salmon fishery have all but disappeared."

"The installation of the first dams on the Bronx River in the late 1600s swiftly severed the alewives' connection to the Bronx River . . . An initiative to reintroduce these silvery fish into the river gained a good deal of notoriety when 201 fish were captured in Connecticut and released in the Bronx River on March 21, 2006. This was followed by an introduction of 400 fish the next year."

"From 1950 to 1970, the Atlantic catch [of alewives] averaged over 50 million pounds per year; in the last decade, however, an average of just over one million pounds has been hauled in, a plunge of 98 percent . . . counts in Connecticut River fell from an average of 5.4 million from 1981 to 1995, to an average of 1 million by 2001, to an average of only 300,000 by just 2008."

"The Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is the primary law that governs marine fisheries management in U.S. federal waters. First passed in 1976, the MSA fosters the long-term biological and economic sustainability of marine fisheries. Its objectives include preventing overfishing, rebuilding overfished stocks, increasing long-term economic and social benefits, ensuring a safe and sustainable supply of seafood, [and] protecting habitat that fish need to spawn, breed, feed, and grow to maturity."

“I remember not going anywhere near Promontory Point or other beaches because the rotten smell was overpowering during the summer a month or two each year when the dead alewives were littering the beach in thick piles . . . ”

“By 1965, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources reported: ‘The alewife presently makes up over 90% of the weight of all fish present in the Great Lakes.’ Officials at that time declared, ‘It is so numerous that it now poses a threat to the survival of all species spawning within the Great Lakes.’ The 1968 government report said that alewives had become ‘pests mindful of the great locust plagues recorded in history’ and that: ‘worst of all they move in enormous schools from the deeper recesses of the lakes, especially Lake Michigan, into inshore waters and die here by the millions — clogging water intakes and piling up in stinking masses on shore.’”

"Commercial alewife landings in the U.S. peaked in the late 1950s and mid 1970s at over 34,500 mt before declining to minimal levels in the late 1970s with implementation of the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act . . . Intensification of the river herring fishery was associated with declining abundance in U.S. river systems."