Print this pageRejuvenating the Penobscot to make way for salmon, other sea-run fish
By Elizabeth McGowan
Bob Croce began trying to tease Atlantic salmon from Maine’s Penobscot River in his early 20s. He didn’t land what he’s christened a noble fish until almost a decade had passed and he’d clocked 76 solo hours combing the waters of New England’s second-largest river.
It was Father’s Day 1976 when a friend helped him net that unforgettable 15.5-pound (7-kilogram) fish at the famed Bangor Salmon Pool.
“You cast over the same spot for hours and hours, then for some mysterious reason a fish will take a fly,” Croce recalled more than 30 years later. “It’s a cognitive experience. Your mind can’t roam. You can’t ask for any more of a challenge than Atlantic salmon fishing.”
Impacts of the usual industrial era suspects—pollution, overfishing and barriers such as an insurmountable gauntlet of dams—have contributed to depleting today’s endangered salmon population to a pitifully unsustainable 1,000 statewide. Maine is the last stronghold for a swimmer that once graced New England’s freshwaters south to Connecticut’s Housatonic River.
With salmon fishing mostly off limits in Maine since 1999, those in need of a fix have to shuttle off to Canada. Still, Croce, a Massachusetts native, is confident that salmon fishing in his adopted state doesn’t have to remain a memory.
That core belief spurs his championship of an unprecedented undertaking to balance the environment and the economy in Maine’s largest watershed. Conservation organizations are collaborating with state and federal officials, the Penobscot Indian Nation and a hydropower company to spur the recovery of Atlantic salmon and 10 other native sea-run fish species by rejuvenating 1,000 miles (about 1,609 kilometers) of Penobscot habitat.
It’s a complicated, expensive, multi-layered project coordinated by an Augusta-based, not-for-profit corporation named the Penobscot River Restoration Trust. The $55 million blueprint calls for removing two of the southernmost dams, installing a state-of-the-art fish passage at another and improving fish passage at four others.
The Penobscot, which drains a third of Maine, traces its humble beginnings to Mount Katahdin. A final agreement signed in June 2004 allows the Trust to shut down three of the southernmost dams it buys from PPL Corp., formerly known as Pennsylvania Power and Light. To keep its river-dependent energy supply flowing, PPL has the option of upping its power production at half a dozen less-restrictive dams in the watershed.
If permitting, licensing and contractor selection proceeds on schedule, the restoration project could optimistically be completed by 2015. Though the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is pursuing funding for the project, private fundraising continues because that federal allotment isn’t guaranteed.
“This Penobscot project is a linchpin, because it could really make a difference on a watershed level, and has the potential to be a model,” said NOAA spokeswoman Robin Bruckner, based near Washington, D.C. “We’re ready, willing and able. If it fails for lack of funding from Congress, that could be a showstopper.”
Perhaps taking a cue from two federally funded U.S. initiatives that remove blockages and right cockeyed culverts—the Open Rivers Initiative and the Fish Passage Program—the Canadian government dedicated a $30 million trust fund in late 2006. This year the newly minted, nonprofit Atlantic Salmon Conservation Foundation began awarding grants for projects that conserve, restore and rebuild salmon habitat in Atlantic Canada and Quebec.
Two of the Penobscot dams, the Veazie, closest to Bangor, and the Great Works, near Old Town, will be taken out. On paper, opening those 12 miles (about 19 kilometers) of river would restore 100 percent of the historic habitat for lower river species that shy away from steep rapids or waterfalls: striped bass, rainbow smelt, tomcod and Atlantic and endangered shortnose sturgeon.
Northward near Howland, a dam at the juncture of the Piscataquis and Penobscot will be decommissioned, but left standing to honor townspeople’s requests. It’s here, along waters almost the length of two football fields, where experts are tasked with crafting a nature-mimicking passage that fish can find and navigate.
“The design is rocket science, because certain species of fish are so finicky with the way they move upstream,” NOAA fishery biologist John Catena said about the mini-stream. “There are very few examples of this in the Northeast.”
That engineering genius will allow the more “athletic” species—Atlantic salmon, American eel, American shad, alewife, blueback herring and sea lamprey—to reclaim their traditional digs in the Penobscot’s northern reaches. Those same bold and hardy half-dozen also shouldn’t be intimidated by a lift to be installed farther south to “ferry” them across the Milford Dam, once the site of daunting rapids.
Jeff Reardon, Trout Unlimited’s full-time liaison to the Trust, likes to joke that if he were God, all dams would be removed so fish could flex their former freedoms and the Trust would reach its promised goal of restoring free-flowing habitat. But lacking deity status, he instead bellies up to the bargaining table to seek common ground.
“I’m not going to get anywhere arguing with people about their values,” he said. “We think we are better off making a decision that local communities embrace.”
He’s referring to the situation in Howland, where citizens have lobbied to preserve their impoundment, a cultural icon they cherish as their town common. It’s near this 570-foot (more than 152-meter) spillway that inventors are being asked to configure, a highly engineered, stream-like channel that beckons fish during low and high water flows. Slope, depth and water velocity are integral to the complex equation.
It’s imperative to get it exactly right, Reardon warned, so it doesn’t end up as yet another well-intentioned but useless “New England monument to our failure to understand how fish move through rivers.”
Dam removal isn’t yet off the table in Howland, he said. That option could still come to fruition if the bypass proves to be untenable after a 15-year trial period.
A river long abused and reshaped by timber company log drives, soil runoff from road construction and paper mill pollution doesn’t magically recover to its ancient flourishing self just because human beings decide to obliterate a few impediments.
“With this project, there are hurdles and challenges, and we need to go in with our eyes open,” said NOAA fishery biologist Rory Saunders. “It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s a great first step.”
After feeding in the Davis Strait between Labrador and Greenland, salmon swim 2,400 miles (more than 3,862 kilometers) to their natal Maine rivers. To spawn and survive, they need cool, super-oxygenated, flowing water; clean gravel (suspended sediments suffocate eggs); and an abundance of refuges for overwintering.
While Saunders is aware that the salmon is the “poster fish” of this effort, his studies are helping to uncover the intricate relationships that unfolded as these 11 sea-run species co-evolved for thousands of years. Not only can some of these other fish serve as meals for juvenile and adult salmon, but they also play significant roles in the salmon’s life cycle.
For example, it’s likely native predators such as double-crested cormorants, river otters and ospreys didn’t decimate salmon smolt populations because they could feed on more plentiful alewives.
“To a large degree, a lot of these are untested hypotheses,” Saunders said about trying to predict if natural cycles will reign again. “That’s why we have to keep monitoring.”
Saunders and other specialists will be eagle-eyeing predator-prey interplay and any number of concerns as they monitor this river re-evolution. Like democracy, it seems, this enterprise will require eternal vigilance.
New England native Elizabeth McGowan writes about energy and environmental issues from her adopted home, Washington, D.C.
A version of this article appeared in “Outdoor America,” a publication of The Izaak Walton League of America at http://www.iwla.org.
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Envisioning Success
By Elizabeth McGowan
Call them persnickety, but native fish just can’t flourish when their watery worlds are blocked and soiled.
The Penobscot River Restoration Trust’s ambitious dam-removal project, however, could alter that dynamic dramatically. Fish biologists agree it’s reasonable to expect the Penobscot’s populations of three species—alewives, shad and salmon—to eventually swell from near zero to at least 4 million alewives, 1.5 million shad and 10,000 to 12,000 salmon.
“We know the alewives will respond quickly,” said Maine-based fishery biologist Rory Saunders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Whereas with the sturgeons, because of their reproductive cycles, we’re looking at many decades.”
While fecund, adaptable alewives are at the speedy end of the restoration scale, salmon and shad are just the opposite because they’re selective about their spawning sites, diet and habitat. Eels are the only species that return to the ocean to spawn.
“It’s not an overnight thing,” Massachusetts-based NOAA fisheries specialist John Catena said about boosting numbers of all 11 targeted species. “Our yardstick is, 10 to 20 years from now, if we’re not seeing measurable increases in these populations of fish, we’re going to be pretty disappointed.”
“We don’t have specific numeric targets today,” he continued. “But we’re going to get there.”
Fishing guide Bob Croce is eager for the piscine puzzle to be solved. Soon he and Maine colleagues hope to be aiding the Penobscot River Restoration Trust with fish surveys along the Penobscot and its tributaries.
“Maine people have always been intimately involved with their rivers,” Croce said. “And it’s not just fish we’re talking about. Rivers were for recreation and economic vitality. We lost a vital community resource. Instead of turning our back on rivers, now we have a chance to recreate a culture that was lost.”
Before fish supplies dwindled so drastically, an annual springtime tradition called for Maine to deliver an Atlantic salmon to the White House. The last recipient was the first President George Bush in 1992.
If the salmon supply rebounds sufficiently, Croce will certainly consider plying the Penobscot for this sublime cold-water fish once again.
“There’s still that whole aura, that whole mystique, that whole aesthetic experience of fishing for Atlantic salmon,” said Croce, a Massachusetts native who himself migrated to Maine four decades ago.
Who knows? Maybe in the not-too-distant future he will be the fortunate one who plucks a prized salmon from the teeming river, packs it in ice and delivers it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.