{"id":1012,"date":"2026-07-12T11:35:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2026-07-12T11:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:35:28","slug":"dam-removals-helped-bring-about-a-stunning-comeback-for-maines-alewives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1012","title":{"rendered":"Dam Removals Helped Bring About a Stunning Comeback for Maine\u2019s Alewives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>Inside Climate News\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>

Read more A World Cup Star Can Be \u201cBabygirl.\u201d But For Now, He\u2019s Mostly AI.<\/a><\/p>\n

For a few<\/span> weeks each summer, the Sebasticook River in Benton, Maine, is paved with flashing silver scales, so thick it seems you could almost walk across. The alewives have returned for their annual migration.<\/p>\n

On a mid-May weekend, Benton held its annual Alewife Festival on the riverbank. With the tunes of a local steel drum band in the background, families made fish-themed crafts, sampled smoked alewives, and watched the migration in progress. Below Benton Falls Dam, fishermen hauled alewives into their boats one full net at a time.<\/p>\n

Looking at this scene, it\u2019s hard to believe that 35 years ago, fewer than 800 alewives were making this trip upriver. Last year, they numbered 9 million.<\/p>\n

The story of Maine\u2019s alewives is a conservation success decades in the making\u2014and unmatched on the rest of the Atlantic coast.<\/p>\n

Like Benton, several<\/span> Maine towns hold spring festivals or 5K runs to celebrate the alewives\u2019 return. In the coastal town of Penobscot, it\u2019s the biggest event of the year, according to Bailey Bowden, who heads the local alewife committee.<\/p>\n

Bowden, age 60, is a ninth-generation resident of Penobscot, population 1,100. He first learned about alewives from older relatives when he was around five years old. There\u2019s something special about this fish, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty impressive to see a brook full of fish, thousands and thousands of these fish that you can just reach down into the water and catch them with your hands,\u201d said Bowden, who sports a dark ponytail and a gray beard under his Alewife Harvesters of Maine cap.<\/p>\n

The alewife, or river herring, doesn\u2019t sound like a source of such enthusiasm. The name supposedly comes from the fish\u2019s rotund silver bellies, an unflattering comparison to female tavernkeepers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The species lives mostly in the Atlantic Ocean, from Newfoundland to South Carolina, but in early summer the adults migrate as far as 100 miles inland to spawn in ponds and lakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alewives aren\u2019t considered a game fish, though some people do catch and smoke them. But they are a linchpin for Maine\u2019s river ecosystems\u2014one that basically disappeared from many of those rivers for decades.<\/p>\n

They act as a \u201cbiological conveyor belt\u201d of nutrients between the ocean and inland waters, said Rustin Taylor, the executive director of the Alewife Harvesters of Maine. Seals, otters, bald eagles, ospreys, pollock, trout, and other carnivores eat alewives. The fish fed generations of Native communities and colonial and industrial American towns. The Passamaquoddy tribe\u2019s name for the species, siqonomeq, translates to \u201cthe fish that feeds all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, lobster boats use alewives as a favorite and affordable bait, said Taylor, 47, who spent 12 years as part of a lobstering crew. \u201cMaine fishermen are very lucky to have that resource,\u201d said Taylor, whose home in Somesville, near Acadia National Park, overlooks the local alewife run, which he helps to steward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of the alewives\u2019 charm is that \u201cthey swim up right into the heart of your town,\u201d said 32-year-old Anne Zegers, the sea-run fisheries monitoring coordinator for Manomet Conservation Sciences, and a coordinator of the Gulf of Maine River Herring Network.<\/p>\n

Alewife festivals, Zegers said, are a chance to celebrate alewives\u2019 role in local ecosystems and economies and to talk about conservation. Plus, their migration coincides with returning warm weather, which after a long Maine winter is reason enough to hold a party, she said.<\/p>\n

Taylor recalls seeing<\/span> alewives in childhood, \u201cbefore they disappeared in Somesville\u201d during his teenage years. \u201cI remember being mesmerized,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But even then, he was only seeing a remnant of the tens of millions of fish that once made the annual trip up Maine\u2019s rivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beginning in the 1700s, dams created a series of aquatic roadblocks. Alewives can wriggle their way through shallows and rocky water, but they can\u2019t make the giant leaps required to cross significant gaps.\u00a0Instead, they get trapped downstream as easy pickings for predators, Zegers said.<\/p>\n

As far back as colonial Maine, some dams were built with chutes or other methods to allow migration, but not all were well designed or maintained. It wasn\u2019t enough to sustain the fish\u2019s population. Dams downstream of Benton, for instance, decimated the town\u2019s alewife harvest by the 1840s.<\/p>\n

Even some modern dams had the same issues. In the town of Phippsburg, a fish channel from the 1980s sat more than 2 feet above the water at low tide, blocking migration for more than half of every day, said Troy Wallace, the town\u2019s alewife committee chair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Overharvesting also hit alewife populations. In the 1950s, at the height of fisheries activity, Maine\u2019s town harvests and offshore commercial fishing contributed to a nationwide catch that averaged about 170 million pounds per year, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).<\/p>\n

Alewife populations spiraled downward. Several rivers that had once supported millions of fish dwindled to fewer than a thousand.<\/p>\n

Some communities took a hands-on approach to try to keep their alewife runs going. Bowden remembers scooping buckets of fish and depositing them upstream of Penobscot\u2019s dams as a teenager.<\/p>\n

Maine progressively placed more limits on commercial harvests from the 1960s through the 1990s, hoping to counter the downward trend. More and more harvests closed or became infrequent.<\/p>\n

At their lowest in 1994, Maine\u2019s town harvests caught only 150,000 pounds of alewives, down from more than 3 million at their peak.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the ASMFC instituted a moratorium on all commercial alewife fishing on the Atlantic coast until states could demonstrate sustainable management plans. Local harvests also had to prove their sustainability before they could resume.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a right that towns have had forever,\u201d Bowden said. \u201cIt was a pretty big slap in the face to lose the right to harvest this fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the 1990s,<\/span> dam removals and fish channel construction have gradually reopened sections of the state\u2019s rivers to migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of those dam removals have led to incredible restorations of alewife migrations much faster than anticipated,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

Ecologically speaking, dam removal is the best method for reviving alewife migration. Taylor described removal of two dams on Maine\u2019s Penobscot River as \u201cprobably one of the premier success stories of our time\u201d for fish conservation. The effort started in 1999 and was completed in 2016.<\/p>\n

When removal isn\u2019t an option, bypasses are the go-to solutions.<\/p>\n

In Benton, engineers built the fish equivalent of an elevator on the local hydroelectric dam in 2006. A large bucket dips into the downstream side of the river and attracts alewives with an artificial current. Every five minutes, the bucket closes and lifts to meet a chute at the top of the dam, where the fish are dumped out to continue upstream.<\/p>\n

During the Alewife Festival in May, attendees got to observe buckets of alewives being lifted past the once-impenetrable barrier.<\/p>\n

Towns with smaller dams can often get by with less-sophisticated solutions. In Penobscot, the fishway is a series of rocky pools that gradually change the elevation. Phippsburg replaced its inefficient 1980s channel with a similar rock-pool solution in 2025, said Wallace, a 54-year-old father of two who has been on his town\u2019s alewife committee for 14 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Designing an alewife<\/span> highway comes with challenges. Downstream access is critical, since alewives don\u2019t die after spawning, unlike salmon.<\/p>\n

Both adults and juveniles can get trapped if a channel is poorly designed or if a drought lowers water levels, said Theo Willis, the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) sea-run fish restoration coordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last summer\u2019s drought in Maine led to mass die-offs of alewife spawn, Zegers said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

About five years in advance of a fish-access project, the DMR must stock alewives in the pond or lake so the next generation will return to spawn. Willis described it as the \u201csecret sauce\u201d of successful alewife conservation. The state stocks more than 3 million fish annually.<\/p>

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Sometimes the challenges come from people, not fish. Businesses and private landowners can be resistant to modifying or removing their dams, requiring years of lobbying and negotiations. Citizens who have spent decades enjoying an artificial lake may not want to see it disappear.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting people to realize that a different landscape, a flowing river landscape, is not the wrong landscape is probably one of the biggest challenges we face,\u201d Willis said.<\/p>\n

Zegers said removal has become \u201cmuch more palatable to a lot of communities\u201d as dams age and upkeep becomes more expensive.<\/p>\n

A fish channel also requires ongoing maintenance. Every spring, people like Bowden, Taylor, and Wallace are out in the streams resetting rocks, replacing worn infrastructure, cleaning debris, clearing beaver dams, and filling cracks in concrete.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a village to help the fish,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

Plus, there\u2019s the cost, which can outstrip municipal budgets.<\/p>\n

In Phippsburg, Wallace said the original plan to replace the fish channel in the mid-2010s would have cost more than $1 million, beyond what the 2,000-person town could afford. The rock pools installed last year instead cost about $200,000, half of which was covered by donations. Penobscot\u2019s fishways and related projects have cost at least $6 million in grants and donations, Bowden said.<\/p>\n

Nonprofits like the Nature Conservancy have funded some of these projects, including in Phippsburg. The state budget, federal grants and congressional discretionary spending usually cover most of the costs for major projects, according to the DMR. The 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act were windfalls for Maine\u2019s migratory fish, with more than $60 million to fund\u00a023 public-private projects.<\/p>\n

The DMR still has a laundry list of dam removal and fish access projects for the near future, Willis said.<\/p>\n

Today, Maine\u2019s alewife<\/span> population is looking better than it has in decades\u2014and better than populations on most of the Atlantic coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve gone from losing the fish completely in a lot of river systems due to damming and pollution, and now we have some of the largest populations in the globe,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

In 2025, more than 20 million alewives were counted migrating in Maine, Zegers estimated from River Herring Network data. Benton Falls Dam, at 9 million fish, was the largest run in the state and one of a handful of sites with more than a million fish. Most runs range in the tens or hundreds of thousands.<\/p>\n

Penobscot had 169,000 alewives enter its two ponds to spawn last year, according to the River Herring Network. \u201cIt was definitely a cool thing to see these fish swimming where I watched them 30 years ago,\u201d Bowden said.<\/p>\n

In their wake come the eagles, seals, and other creatures searching for a meal. When alewives are running, the river downstream of Benton Falls Dam has the largest number of bald eagle sightings anywhere in New England, according to the DMR. In Penobscot, Bowden once counted 42 eagles in a half-mile area.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, it was rare to see an eagle,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just incredible how many eagles there are now.\u201d<\/p>\n

South of Maine, states aren\u2019t seeing the same positive trend, and in some cases their populations are declining, according to the ASMFC. The commission still considers alewives to be\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Zegers said scientists aren\u2019t sure of the cause, since other states are also pursuing dam removal and fish access. It may be because of differences in ocean fishing activity, she said, so fewer Maine alewives are caught at sea. Warmer oceans may be driving the fish north, away from their spawning grounds.<\/p>\n

Or, it could just be that Maine\u2019s alewife runs were bigger to begin with, so even a diminished population was still large enough to recover, she said.<\/p>\n

With alewives on<\/span> the rebound in most of Maine, the state is now expanding towns\u2019 harvesting rights. It is one of only five states that have gotten federal approval for sustainable river herring fisheries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of last year, 25 Maine municipalities have been granted the ability to commercially harvest alewives, according to Maine DMR data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2024, 2.5 million pounds of alewives were commercially harvested in Maine, all through local catches. Most former fisheries off the coast, which were historically the largest harvesters, remain closed, according to the DMR.<\/p>\n

While harvesting alewives may seem contradictory to conservation, Taylor said they actually work in tandem. Harvesters\u2019 knowledge of their rivers makes them the \u201ccanary in the coal mine\u201d when something\u2019s amiss in the migration, he said.<\/p>\n

They also are active in cleanup and maintenance of their local fish channels, since that improves their future catch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be an incentive to have this stewardship take place, and either that comes from the profit of an alewife harvest or it\u2019s going to have to come out of local taxes,\u201d Bowden said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, the Maine DMR and ASMFC maintain more control over harvests than in the 1950s. Towns manage their own harvests, but the state sets limits on when, where, and how much they can catch to make sure enough fish are reaching spawning grounds.<\/p>\n

A town must track populations for 10 years to show at least 235 fish per acre in its spawning pool before getting approval to harvest. The DMR also studies scale samples to estimate the age, size, and gender ratio at each run.<\/p>\n

Six municipalities are actively collecting data to reach that 10-year benchmark, including Phippsburg.<\/p>\n

Wallace said Phippsburg\u2019s run has been unpredictable. The town saw peak migrations of 50,000 to 60,000 fish each year in 2018 and 2019, followed by three years where fewer than 10,000 were counted. \u201cWe just never had what [the DMR] wanted to see for a fishery,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n

Bowden, who is Penobscot\u2019s contracted harvester, believes requiring a decade of data is too much, and that towns should be allowed incremental quotas as they continue to track populations. \u201cCounting fish for 10 years is a drag, for sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When he first started working on restoring his local harvest, Bowden only needed five years of data. As the state gradually increased that threshold, he felt like the goalposts kept moving even though Penobscot\u2019s run had reached healthy numbers. \u201cThe whole point was I want to catch a fish. That was where this all started. It was just ridiculous government red tape that I couldn\u2019t, because the fish were there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Taylor said some towns lost interest in their alewife work when the requirements changed.<\/p>\n

Penobscot was allowed a small pilot harvest program in advance of the 10-year threshold, but last year was the town\u2019s first full commercial harvest in more than 50 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great feeling knowing that we were finally able to reclaim our rights to the fishery,\u201d Bowden said.<\/p>\n

Even as Maine\u2019s<\/span> alewife population trends upward, Zegers said their future is complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fish still contend with declining numbers in other states, plus threats like fishing on the open ocean and climate change\u2013driven droughts.\u00a0This summer, Zegers said several towns have reported lower-than-usual migration numbers. It will take time to figure out why.<\/p>\n

There are \u201cso many things to keep you up at night,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Taylor said he feels reasonably optimistic. Since many harvesters grew up during the days when alewives had all but disappeared from their hometown rivers, he thinks this generation is likely to avoid the errors of the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen enough abuses of over-harvests that the awareness is strong enough now that that\u2019s not going to work out well,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

Community awareness seems to be heading in the same direction, he said. After all, what other fish inspires so many parties in its honor? \u201cMaybe people take care of things once it\u2019s been lost and regained a little bit,\u201d he said.<\/p>

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That, plus decades of infrastructure upgrades, have revived a keystone fish species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"yoast_head":"\nDam Removals Helped Bring About a Stunning Comeback for Maine\u2019s Alewives - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1012\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dam Removals Helped Bring About a Stunning Comeback for Maine\u2019s Alewives - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That, plus decades of infrastructure upgrades, have revived a keystone fish species.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1012\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-12T11:35:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/a8bd0bccece63c28137be4a9211b6347-1024x575.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"575\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6b7c79bcfd888d98f34c5413df7e81a2\"},\"headline\":\"Dam Removals Helped Bring About a Stunning Comeback for Maine\u2019s Alewives\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-12T11:35:28+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012\"},\"wordCount\":2663,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/5a42c025f742f562dcd70b26d7213616.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Environment\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1012\",\"name\":\"Dam Removals Helped Bring About a Stunning Comeback for Maine\u2019s Alewives - 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