Downeast Salmon Federation News

Maine needs to reopen St. Croix to alewives
 

Since then, the alewife population has crashed. In 1987, more than 2.6 million alewives returned to the river; last year, only 1,300 alewives returned.
The law closed fish passageways on the river because a handful of fishing guides believed that migrating ale-wives caused the collapse in the 1980s of smallmouth bass populations in one of the lakes connected to the St. Croix River. This claim had no scientific evidence to support it.
And now, peer-reviewed science has demonstrated beyond a doubt that sea-run alewives pose no threat to smallmouth bass in the St. Croix.
LD 1957, An Act to Restore Diadromous Fish in the St. Croix River, will overturn the 1995 law and give alewives access to their historic spawning grounds in the St. Croix watershed and prevent their extinction.
Alewives are a cornerstone species and a critical component of Maine's river ecosystems. They are a key food source for the numerous other species that inhabit our coastal waters and river corridors. They feed recreationally important fish like trout, salmon, striped bass and bluefish, and are a favored food of commercially important species like cod and pollock.
Because they move between often highly polluted lakes and rivers and the less-polluted ocean, alewives are less contaminated with mercury, PCBs and other pollutants than many resident fish species that spend most of their lives in contaminated water bodies. Alewives thus provide a healthier meal for bald eagles, ospreys, otters, seals and other birds and wildlife.
Alewives are the preferred bait of Maine's lobster industry and so are valuable to our region's economy. About 1.2 million pounds of alewives with a commercial value of $200,000 were reported harvested from just 13 of Maine's smaller rivers in 2007.
In 2006, one bait dealer harvested 3,000 bushels of alewives on the Sebasticook River, from a run of alewives that had been absent for more than a century and a half because of dams. Those alewives returned in 1999, when the Edwards Dam was removed to restore the Kennebec River in Augusta.
Dozens of towns and cities have lucrative alewife harvesting rights on coastal streams and rivers. In 2007, Ellsworth collected $21,000 from the alewife harvest in Union River.
Restoring the alewife population on the St. Croix River to its 1987 level would allow an annual sustainable harvest of nearly one million pounds, valued at more than $150,000. That's a fair amount of bait for lobstermen and money for Washington County.
Numerous studies have shown that Maine's ground-fish stocks are in decline in part because of the collapse of alewife and other river herring populations. Experts believe the restoration of large runs of these fish is essential to bring back coastal populations of cod, pollock, haddock and hake.
Fortunately, we now know that alewives and smallmouth bass can co-exist in the St. Croix, just as they do in thousands of other water bodies from eastern Canada to the Carolinas. Good science and fisheries management need to determine the outcome of this issue, not misinformation.
It is not too late for the St. Croix's alewives, but action needs to be taken now. The time has come to allow Maine's alewives to reach their native spawning habitat, the same waters that they have used for millennia.
A restored alewife population on the St. Croix River will provide tremendous ecological and economic benefits for Washington County and all the people of Maine.
Clinton B. "Bill" Townsend, a Skowhegan attorney, is president of Maine Rivers and was on the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization from 1990 to 1994. Brownie Carson is executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine.