In-between work this spring I have been occasionally volunteering with Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary in Somesville, Maine. I have been assisting with the Alewive Migration count. Alewives, sometimes called river herring, are a migratory diadromous fish that visit the streams and ponds each year to spawn. Diadromous means the fish spend most of their adult life in saltwater, but briefly return to freshwater to reproduce each spring. At this particular watershed there is a fishladder that assists the fish with traversing over a dam. Those Alewives that don’t choose to spawn in the pond directly next to the dam will swim few miles upstream to two different additional ponds to spawn.
The Alewive fishery was once quite abundant in the state of Maine. Alewives are harvested in only about 30 Maine towns, and most historical runs have disappeared due to overfishing, pollution of river waters, and by the erection of dams creating a barrier to fish passage.
This migration count project is important because it helps gain information about the health and recovery of the Alewive population of the Somesville watershed comprising over 1000 surface acres of lake and stream habitat.
-The Patriarch
Link with info on Alewives: https://www.fws.gov/gomcp/pdfs/alewife%20fact%20sheet.pdf
Fish ladder and Alewives moving through counting gate. Osprey coming in for an Alewive Snack.
The Big Year 2021 