>>Fishermen's Voice Monthly Newspaper, Gouldsboro Maine

Gouldsboro fishway built in the 1970s to enable alewives to enter the pond beyond the dam. Alewives historically entered the smaller rivers and streams along the coast. These waterways were less polluted than the larger rivers were in the 1960s. Photo: Fishermen's Voice

As recently as thirty years ago, springtime on the coast of Maine meant alewives. Caught for both food and bait, the alewife was the largest of the anadromous fisheries, and the yearly catch exceeded 3.4 million pounds.

Now, like so many other fisheries, the catch has dropped to less than a third of that number. Historically, alewives have run in the smaller rivers and streams.

With its numerous rivers and streams, Maine’s coast hosts ten native anadromous (fish that live in salt water and spawn in freshwater) fish species, like the Atlantic salmon, American shad, blueback herring, smelt, striped bass and others. Alewives are native up and down the eastern seaboard, from Newfoundland to South Carolina, and in Maine alone there are over 90 lakes and ponds that support sea-run alewives.

An adult alewife measures about 12 inches long and weighs just over half a pound. They are iridescent gray, nearly green with silver underbellies and look similar to the blueback herring. Spawning typically runs during May and June, when the adults head to the freshwater lakes and ponds. After spawning, the adults return to the sea while the young spend two to six months in the freshwater, feeding on phytoplankton and gaining strength for their journey to the sea, which occurs between July and October. The juvenile alewives spend anywhere from three to five years at sea, traveling the coast in large schools, before returning to spawn.

Although not as compromised as the Atlantic salmon, the alewife runs have dropped substantially over the years. The alewife has a long and complex legacy, dating back to pre-colonial times.

“They were one of the original staples of the Native Americans,” said Duane Shaw of the Downeast Salmon Federation. “They were abundant and easy to catch. Early colonists learned to catch them as well.”

The alewife, an important food source, was also a critical component of fertilizer, and both natives and colonists built their gardens on great mounds of decaying alewives.

But the glory day of the alewife ended quickly. Tempers flared between the natives and the colonists concerning the fish.

“As soon as the colonists began building dams for sawmills and grist mills, they realized that the fishery would be destroyed,” said Shaw. “So there were some of the first battles over fisheries and the first laws passed for fish passages.”

Hundreds of years later, conservationists and fishermen are still facing an upstream battle with dams. Only now, water pollution and over-fishing have become major factors, as well. Fortunately, the alewife runs have persevered on many small waterways.

There are 35 municipalities in Maine, from South Berwick to Perry, that govern the commercial harvesting rights on 39 coastal streams and rivers.

“Historically, we focused [conservation] efforts on the smaller coastal runs,” said Tom Squires of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR). “In the 60’s and 70’s, the major rivers were just so polluted.”

Gathering to dip-net alewives or river herring, First falls of the Medomak River in Waldoboro, spring, 1874. Left center is a new fishway. The town voted in a six year moratorium on taking alewives, following the 1874 season. Afterward fishing was allowed three days a week. Photo: Courtesy Maine State Museum

In 1973, the DMR allowed individual towns to retain the rights to the alewife fisheries, and to do so they needed to submit a commercial harvesting plan to the DMR, which still has the final say on how and when the fish are harvested. For example, one measure requires a mandatory 72-hour closure, from 6 a.m. on Thursdays to 6 a.m. on Sundays.

“It’s pretty complex compared to most fisheries,” said Shaw. “You have the feds, the state, and beyond that, the towns. The clam fishery is similar. These are unique to New England, very unusual. A historic precedence of local control over the resources, which is good if it works well, but not good if the “good ol’ boy” mentality kicks in.”

“But most fishermen want to know that there will be a fishery in the future,” he added.

Currently, some 98 percent of the alewife catch goes to lobster bait, and on some days, there are lines of fishermen waiting to get the fresh bait for spring lobstering or halibut trawls. Fishermen in different areas use different methods to catch alewives; some use dip nets, some use traps, some use seines.

Squires said the low alewife catches are a combination of things. “The runs are down, but we’ve taken more drastic conservation measures, too. Over the last several years, the landings have come up.”

Since the early 1970’s, over 12 million dollars of state, federal and private money has been spent on restoration of anadromous fish runs. The money goes to everything from habitat restoration to building fishways to trucking the fish around blockages, such as dams.

On some of the large rivers, the alewives are managed solely by the DMR. The fish are collected at the lowermost dams and trucked to the lakes to spawn. In some cases, fishermen use a fish lift, which is essentially a cage that, once full of fish at the base of the dam, they lift over the dam, and release the fish.

“Except for last year [with its heavy rains],” Squires said, “we’ve seen all the river fish runs come up. This is the first year we’ve actually had fish passage on the Kennebec and Sebasticook.”

But still, the fish aren’t reaching their spawning grounds in the numbers that Squires would like to see, and he hopes that trucking the fish will be a temporary solution.

“An easy thing about restoring alewives is that you take spawning adults from one lake to another, and the young will come back to that lake,” he said.

“But habitat is a problem,” he added. “Getting them through the turbines is a problem. There’s a big push for us to get the lower two dams out of the Penobscot. But that’s down the road a-ways.”

Alewife, one of many andronomous fish that leave the ocean to spawn in fresh water lakes just off the Maine coast. A near relative of the herring that not very long ago poured into inshore areas in the spring. Hundreds of pole and brush weirs were used to capture herring.

In order to remove dams such as these, the DMR will have to raise sufficient funds to purchase the dams, then breech them.

“There are dams all over the place.,” said Shaw. “All over these small watersheds, and no one’s concerned enough to shake the status quo. That’s what’s going to kill us, those thousands of small dams around the Gulf of Maine that no one pays attention to. Fish passage is a huge issue.”

Shaw sites a case in Whiting, along the Orange River. An 1870’s commissioner’s report stated that anyone that didn’t believe in fish passages should go to Whiting and East Machias and look at the fishery, which had gone from wiped-out to thriving upon the installation of passages.

“But if you go there today,” said Shaw, “there’s no fishway. The sawmill burnt down and they rebuilt the dam with no fish passage. All of these agencies involved and no one’s done a thing about it.”

Another aspect to the alewife, said Squires, is their value as a part of an ecosystem.

“There’s a lot of interest in looking at the anadromous fish as far as benefits for the watershed goes. They provide nutrients and they are a buffer to salmon predators,” said Squires. He goes on to explain that when the population of alewives is high, they act as a physical buffer for the salmon, so predators such as beaver, eagles, cormorants, striped bass, halibut and seals get some alewives instead of just salmon.

“They’re an extremely important nutrient source for freshwater ecosystems,” said Shaw. “Everyone knows that the salmon out west provide nutrients to those ecosystems, and the alewife does that here. They are a huge source.”