A research biologist with the Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the United States Geological Survey, drifted in a boat on the Penobscot River, listening to a crackling radio receiver.
Three enormous dams erected in the Penobscot, starting in the 1830s, changed all that, preventing migratory fish from reaching their breeding grounds. But two of the dams were razed in 2012 and 2013, and since then, fish have been rushing back into the Penobscot, Maine’s largest river.
“Once you remove these dams, migratory fish will probe into the watersheds,” Mr. But fish populations suffered in the 1800s as fishing pressure increased, water quality diminished and, most consequential, dams blocked the fish from their spawning grounds. Until 2013, fish ran a gantlet of three large dams in the first 10 miles of the Penobscot above head of tide, near Bangor. The Penobscot River Restoration Project, a consortium of government and tribal agencies, conservation groups and hydropower companies, spent $60 million to remove the first two dams and to install a fish lift at the next dam upstream.
Before the dams came out, biologists began studying the river’s fish to better understand the baseline conditions. This year, precisely 7,846 shad ventured upriver, past the two demolished dams and through the fish lift at Milford Dam, which is now the first obstacle fish reach. John Banks, the director of the Penobscot Indian Nation Department of Natural Resources, said his tribe long relied on migrating fish like salmon and shad for sustenance, and used river herring to fertilize their gardens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/science/penobscot-river-maine-dam-removal-fish.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fearth&action=click&contentCollection=earth®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront
Three enormous dams erected in the Penobscot, starting in the 1830s, changed all that, preventing migratory fish from reaching their breeding grounds. But two of the dams were razed in 2012 and 2013, and since then, fish have been rushing back into the Penobscot, Maine’s largest river.
“Once you remove these dams, migratory fish will probe into the watersheds,” Mr. But fish populations suffered in the 1800s as fishing pressure increased, water quality diminished and, most consequential, dams blocked the fish from their spawning grounds. Until 2013, fish ran a gantlet of three large dams in the first 10 miles of the Penobscot above head of tide, near Bangor. The Penobscot River Restoration Project, a consortium of government and tribal agencies, conservation groups and hydropower companies, spent $60 million to remove the first two dams and to install a fish lift at the next dam upstream.
Before the dams came out, biologists began studying the river’s fish to better understand the baseline conditions. This year, precisely 7,846 shad ventured upriver, past the two demolished dams and through the fish lift at Milford Dam, which is now the first obstacle fish reach. John Banks, the director of the Penobscot Indian Nation Department of Natural Resources, said his tribe long relied on migrating fish like salmon and shad for sustenance, and used river herring to fertilize their gardens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/science/penobscot-river-maine-dam-removal-fish.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fearth&action=click&contentCollection=earth®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront