FOPR Cosponsors Maine Rivers Alewife Presentation
On one of those really cold nights in January (although not as cold as it
got a few days later) FOPR, Friends of Casco Bay and the Gulf of Maine Council
on the Marine Environment sponsored a presentation by Naomi Schalit, Executive
Director of Maine Rivers (MR) on native alewife and their important to our
ecosystems.
The meeting was held on January 7th at the Jeff Nixon Training Center at
Portland Water District and thanks to the organizing work of each of these
groups and a network of dedicated contacts, we had thirty-two people turn
out to hear about alewives, their history and the need to restore them to
our river, lakes and streams.
As Ms. Schalit says: “Think of Maine, and what do you see? Spruce covered
islands; a long, craggy coastline; thundering rivers…loons, bald eagles,
black bears…and alewives. Alewives, frankly, may not be what most of
us conjure up when we first think of Maine. That’s because, as once
was the case with loons and bald eagles, Maine’s historically thriving population
of alewives has plummeted during the last two centuries, victims of polluted
and dammed rivers, and of over harvesting. We’ve lost our memory of
alewives, and how important they are in the life of Maine.
…….Scientists tell us that prior to Europeans settling this region, there
was probably not a stream from one end of the state to the other – and along
the entire Gulf of Maine, for that matter -- that didn’t have an annual alewife
migration, their silvery bodies crammed bank to bank on their springtime
spawning runs….”
This was the first presentation in a series of educational sessions to be
given by Maine Rivers on the role of alewives in the Gulf of Maine and Maine’s
river systems. She assembled a highly-qualified team of resource experts
to provide the science and background and her talk described the biological
role of the alewife in the larger Gulf of Maine ecosystem, in our rivers
and also their decline and potential for restoration.
The presentation included vintage photographs from the well-known Damariscotta
Mills alewife run, as well as contemporary, underwater photographs from National
Geographic Photographer Bill Curtsinger.
To read the fact sheet developed by Naomi Schalit (Maine Rivers), Gail Wippelhauser
(MDMR) and Lois Winter (USFWS) recently completed, with key support and additional
fine ideas from Sandra Lary (USFWS), Lee Sochasky (St. Croix International
Waterway Commission) and Barry Mower (MDEP) click on to the pdf document.
Alewife Fact Sheet in PDF format