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Saturday, June 04, 2005
By DAVE SHERWOOD
Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||
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Listen carefully and you’ll hear it. Alewives race through riffling water, tearing at the surface. Striped bass slap their tails and feast. Osprey shriek and soar overhead. Loons wail from headwater lakes. Bald eagles perch and cry out: watching, waiting. It wasn’t always this way. Not long ago, alewife runs on the Kennebec were nearly extirpated by dams, pollution, and overharvesting. But thanks to the work of the Department of Marine Resources, other state agencies, and activists, alewives once again arrive to central Maine by the millions: silvery fish that blacken rivers in one of the most ancient, and honorable migrations of all time. State restoration efforts are succeeding: The river is begging for more. But local people aren’t so sure. A FORGOTTEN PAST Nate Gray is a biologist with the Department of Marine Resources: he manages the Kennebec River Restoration Program. The program is a many-pronged approach in which alewives, shad and blueback herring are restored at a pace the river, and the people, can handle. Since 1986, the run has gone from a handful to nearly two million fish. Now it seems alewives are butting heads with every remaining dam in the watershed. Gray is an outspoken supporter of the plan, and its goals. He comes from a family of fishermen: his grandfather owned Birch Island Camps on Holeb Pond, west of Jackman, and ran it as traditional sporting camps. A love for native fish, like his beloved brook trout, runs deep in Gray’s heritage. That passion is conveyed when Gray talks about almost anything, but especially restoring alewives to the Kennebec. “People have become disconnected by history, by the dams. It’s skipped a generation. What their great great grandfathers once knew has been forgotten,” he says. Historically, he adds, alewives likely had access to ponds as far north as Wasookeag, in Dexter, as far west as Clearwater Pond, in Industry, east to Sebasticook and Unity Ponds, and south to Three-Cornered Pond, and Webber Pond in Vassalboro. That range, then, includes upwards of 20 lakes and ponds in the Kennebec River basin. New — and often non-native — fisheries in many of these lakes and ponds has long since erased alewives from local lore. To bring them back, the Department chose to take restoration efforts slowly — one step at a time. Alewives were captured, painstakingly counted to ensure sustainable numbers, then trucked from places of abundance, like Fort Halifax Dam on the Sebasticook River, to lakes and ponds where they historically spawned. In time, the plan calls for fish passage at all dams, and in some cases, the complete removal of all impediments to upstream passage. Until then, the transferred adult alewives spawn, then drop out of the lakes and return to sea, where they live another season before returning again to spawn. Alewives are anadromous, which means that they must live part of their lifecycle in the ocean. Their biology demands it. Their young, often just two to three inches in size, spend between two and six months in freshwater. By December, they’ve fled for the ocean — ahead of the impending ice and cold. Along the way, both adults and juveniles provide forage, fertilizer and nutrition for nearly every plant, animal and bird — on land, and in salt- and freshwater — in Maine. They are, according to Gray, one of the most important links in the food chain — and a vital part of the ecosystem. CONCERNS AND QUESTIONS Thus far, alewives have been re-introduced to what the Department refers to as “Phase I” lakes: bodies of water with marginal fisheries, or water quality. For many people in central Maine, that’s quite enough. Take Great Moose Pond, for example. Great Moose is considered a Phase II pond. It has a smelt fishery — though it is thought to be ailing. It’s also stocked with brook trout and landlocked salmon. Anglers are concerned that alewives might tax the already questionable forage base, ruining what’s left of the smelt population and the salmon and trout fishery. “The more I learned about them, the less desirable I thought they were,” says Randy Lary, a local fisherman, homeowner on the lake and board member of the Great Moose Lake Association. “Ecosystems change, just like people change. They’ve got enough alewives, I don’t see why they need to introduce them here,” he continues. He says a friend likens it to dinosaurs: they were here a couple million years ago, he says, “so should we try to bring them back, too?” “They {the Department of Marine Resources} just didn’t prove to me that there would be a major benefit for us,” he says. Gray sees it differently. So does Naomi Schalit, the executive director of Maine Rivers and Maine’s most adamant proponent of alewife re-introduction. “A lake is not just put there for fishermen — alewives are an integral part,” she says. “Besides, I don’t believe we have to pit these fish against each other — look at Damariscotta Lake,” she says. Damariscotta has an exceptional bass fishery, one which attracts six bass tournaments each year — more than almost any other in the state. Brown trout thrive there, too. These fish grow fat, say local anglers, on alewives — juvenile and adult. Over the years, they’ve learned to adapt. So do loons, osprey, bald eagles and a host of other wildlife that flocks to the lake. Biologist Gray points to a study done on Lake George, in Skowhegan — a joint study of the Departments of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Environmental Protection and Marine Resources. The study — conducted over 11 years, concluded that the introduction of alewives did not negatively impact the fishery, nor did it impact water quality. Ray Poulin, chair of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife advisory board, has seen that study, but has more questions. Poulin lives in Ripley, near many of the lakes and ponds that the Department wishes to stock. While he acknowledges that he’s not a biologist, he says people need more proof that alewives will do no harm before they’ll accept them in local lakes. “Yes, they were there first, but back then, there weren’t dams on the river. I believe the ecosystems have changed drastically since,” he says. FISH COME FIRST Those who support alewife reintroductions point to the success stories, and caution that they are only proposing to re-introduce alewives to their historical habitat, not add new lakes or ponds to the list. “Who was here first? To me, alewives are like pine trees, brook trout and chickadees. If you’re against alewives, you’re against the others, too,” says Greg Ponte, of Trout Unlimited, and another outspoken advocate of native fisheries. There are many reasons, say supporters like Ponte, to bring them back. They often sight the town of Damariscotta Mills, at the foot of the lake, as an example. Al Railsbach, director of the Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association, knows the lake, the town, and the importance of its alewives intimately well. He raised his children on the shore of the lake — bass fishing, listening to the wailing of loons at night, watching bald eagles and osprey fish and soar over the lake’s nearly pristine pine- ringed shore and dark waters. Besides the abundance of loons, eagles, osprey and sportfish that the alewives attract, Railsbach says that people love them, too. “It’s a mini-tourist industry in May, right through the middle of June. People come to see the fish up close. Kid’s love it,” he says. So do the lobster fishermen, who harvest, then use alewives as a primary — and potent — source of bait. “The alewife culture has been a real asset to the whole area,” says Railsbach. Schalit, from Maine Rivers, also sees the bigger picture — and the potential that a complete alewife restoration could bring to the Kennebec river valley. “For so long, restoration efforts have focused on salmon — but we’ve got to remember that if you want to rebuild something, you don’t start from the top down, you work from the bottom up,” says Schalit. Alewives, they all agree, are fuel for the entire ecosystem. “Anyone who says we can’t do it, or we shouldn’t do it, isn’t thinking about the resource. What about the bald eagles, the mink, the otter, the raccoons, the striped bass, the salmon?” says Ponte.
Dave Sherwood 621-5648 |
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