Ed Friedman of Friends of Merrymeeting Bay alerts me to a great TV piece on the work that FOMB is doing to restore and protect the lower Kennebec and Androscoggin Rivers, ie. Merrymeeting Bay, including doing lots of stuff with local kids.
Watching this, it's important to remember that when older folks around the Bay were kids in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Merrymeeting Bay was nearly dead from water pollution and those kids' only experience with the Bay was a place that stunk so bad that you didn't want to go anywhere near it. Thanks to the U.S. Clean Water Act, Merrymeeting Bay is once again a place where kids are welcome.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Monday, December 07, 2009
On how to restore native brook trout to Queset Brook, North Easton, Massachusetts
Queset Brook in North Easton, Massachusetts was for ten thousand years the native home of the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis). They were extirpated from North Easton 200 years ago when numerous dams were built on Queset Brook to power saw mills and shovel mills.
The earliest reference to Queset Brook, in the History of the Town of Easton (Chaffin 1886) states: "The earliest name given to it was Mill River, if we except the name Trout-Hole Brook, which, however, was only applied to that portion of it which runs through the east part of North-Easton village."
The ability of the "Trout Hole Brook" portion of Queset Brook in North Easton to support trout in the 20th century was proven by William Amory Parker ("Mister Parker"), who for many years in the 1960s and 1970s paid to privately stock brown trout (Salmo trutta) in "Parker's Pond," which is the small dammed pond on Queset Brook behind his house on North Main Street. Mr. Parker let us neighborhood kids fish for and catch these trout and play in his fields and woods, which is why he did it. Many of these stocked trout lived for many years in the pond and brook above it and below it and grew to lengths exceeding 20 inches.
Even after Mr. Parker died and the trout stocking in Queset Brook stopped in the mid 1970s, older and larger trout were still seen in the brook for many years, particularly in the stretch behind Sundell's garage, in the tunnel underneath North Main Street, next to the Ames Free Library, underneath Shep Williams' Antrim Hammer Shop house, underneath the arched stone bridge just above Shep Williams' house, and in the brook from the Hoeshop Pond dam to the inlet of Parker's Pond. When brook trout were stocked in Picker Pond in 1975 to celebrate Easton's 250th anniversary, teen anglers like John Brown and my brother Tim Watts for several years caught brookies in Queset Brook in its short, tortuous, green briar jungle from Picker Pond to Hoeshop Pond.
One of the reasons these trout could survive in Queset Brook even in the heat of the summer is a tiny brook that comes from the Easton Town Pool, which is built on top of a number of large natural springs that begin on Lincoln Street next to the Easton Lutheran Church and are called, collectively, "Lincoln Springs." The pond behind the Easton Town Pool is fed by spring water as is the Town Pool. This is why the original Easton Water Works was built at the site of the Easton Town Pool. Visitors to the town pool in the 1970s will remember the odd, 20-foot high, shingled "pyramid" in the center of the parking lot. Underneath this pyramid was the well head.
Lincoln Spring and its spring brook are still there behind the pond above the Town Pool and the entire "bowl" of land behind the Lutheran Church and the DeCouto's house is a natural spring water seep that funnels into the dug-out basin that is now the Easton Town Pool. All of the water from these springs and seeps is channelled into an old, narrow channel lined with granite blocks which crosses Parker's field and enters Queset Brook at the inlet of Mr. Parker's Pond.
If you go to Parker's field you can still see the overgrown, long and straight ditches cut into the meadow to drain it. In the 1970s, during the heat of the summer, the trout that Mr. Parker stocked would crowd into the tiny slot of the drainage channel from the Town Pool to keep cool. These were also prime frog catching sites for kids. [Some of the ditches may have been made to enhance the growth of native cranberries, which are still found in the stretch of meadow between the Town Pool and Parker's field.]
If you go to the Easton Town Pool in the late fall, after the pool has been drained, and walk around on its bottom, you will see natural springs bubbling up from its bottom that all flow into a central drain beneath the far dock. As kids we used to see tiny hornpout in the drain. How these hornpout and, downstream, the trout, survived the boatloads of swimming pool chemicals dumped into the pool every few weeks every summer to keep kids from getting ringworm is a mystery.
Survival needs for Queset Brook's native trout
In Massachusetts, Easton is a type locality and model for effective, citizen-led open space protection. Efforts to protect open space in Easton began in earnest in the mid 1960s. The results are manifest. But while the citizens of Easton have become adept and efficient at preserving and protecting open land in the town in the past 45 years, the glaring hole in these protection efforts has been the failure to address the effect of 250 years of damming on its brooks and watersheds. Queset Brook is the poster child of this omission.
To restore an extirpated species, you need to know what extirpated them in the first place. At Queset Brook, the answer is simple: numerous small, impassable dams. These dams have had two deleterious effects on native trout. First, they impound the brooks into small ponds, which raise the water temperature of the brook above the maximum which trout can live. Second, these dams fragment the brook into tiny sections and prevent trout from freely moving up and down the brook to find suitable seasonal habitat for all life stages and for giving birth.
At Queset Brook, the effect of this fragmentation and impoundment is most acute during the summer when water temperatures are at trout's thermal maximum. Trout are incredibly adept at finding suitable spawning, growing and summering habitat, if they are not obstructed from doing so, and if the critical habitat they seek is not altered or destroyed. The dams on Queset Brook, as small as they are, have the effect of defeating all of the evolutionary survival techniques which have allowed native brook trout to live in the brook since the last Ice Age. For these reasons, native brook no longer live in Queset Brook, nor can they in its existing condition. The efforts of Mr. William Parker shows that even when trout were annually re-introduced into Queset Brook for many years, they could not successfully reproduce and maintain a wild population as they did for the past 100 centuries. Mr. Parker's experiment shows something is amiss in Queset Brook.
Restoring Queset Brook so its native Brook Trout
can live in it.
A plan to restore the native trout of Queset Brook must eliminate, or reduce to insignificance, those factors which caused their extirpation and have confounded repeated efforts to restore them. This means that removing the small, remaining dams on Queset Brook upstream of North Main Street in North Easton must be a first step. These two dams are the Hoeshop dam and the Parker's Pond dam. Removal or lowering of these two dams would restore all of Queset Brook from its headwaters at Ames Long Pond and the former Flyaway Pond above Shovelshop Pond to its natural channel, elevation and habitat conditions. The next issue is the dams at Shovelshop Pond and Langwater Pond, which impound and destroy virtually all of the native habitat for trout in Queset Brook from Sullivan Avenue to Sheep Pasture, or about one half of the section of Queset Brook that Chaffin (1886) called "Trout Hole Brook." Let's consider the history of these waters in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
What is the history and purpose of Langwater Pond?
Queset Brook was first dammed at Main Street in the early 1700s. The pond at this dam site was greatly enlarged in the late 1800s when the Ames family built a large estate at the junction of Queset and Whitman Brooks. This pond, and the farm next to it, was called "Langwater." By the mid 1970s, Langwater had completely filled with silt and mud and was only a foot or two deep in many areas. At this time, the Ames family paid several local contractors to dig all of the silt and mud out from behind the dam at Main Street so as to deepen and "restore" the pond.
Local contractors for several years (1977-78) drained Langwater and used it as their own private gravel pit. The "reclamation project" became a local joke when several 20 ton excavators got so mired in the muck at the front of the pond that they had to be chained and dragged out by other excavators. Towards the middle of Langwater, off the sheer cliff called "Big Pout," the contractors dug down to nearly 50 feet below the pond's waterline to get the most commercially valuable gravel deposits, until they were finally fired for failing to follow the prescribed dredging plan [and according to Joe Cardoza, hit several huge springs that flooded the excavators]. Upon hiring of a new contractor (Wayne Benson), the narrow, temporary channel on the west side of the pond was knocked down, the dam at Main Street was rebuilt, and the pond was raised again. This was the last time anyone would see the Queset Brook in its valley again.
From the brief glimpses of when it was drained in 1977-1978 and its shoreline topography, the Queset Brook at Langwater Pond was a deep, narrow, cliff and ledge-lined valley, with hemlock and pines rooted in massive outcrops of glacially worn bedrock that fell suddenly to a chasm of rapids, and pools and riffles far below: Trout Hole Brook. Nobody has seen this place in more than 200 years, but it is still there, stumps and all, under 30 feet of clear, still water. Based on Chaffin's description of Trout-Hole Brook as that part of Queset on the "east side" of North Easton village, the section from the dam at Shovelshop to the dam at Langwater must be what was called Trout-Hole Brook.
Today, Langwater (or "Fred's Pond") is an anomaly. It is smack in the center of North Easton Village. It floods nearly a mile of Queset and Whitman Brooks from Main Street to Elm Street and yet there is no canoe launch on the pond, and except for the conservation land on Pond Street next to Big Pout (where the shoreline is extremely steep), there is no public access to the pond. Oh well.
Shovelshop Pond
Unlike Langwater, the public has much greater access to Shovelshop Pond, primarily along Pond Street. Shovelshop was drained and dug out in 1973-1974 which removed a century or so of toxic, industrially polluted sediments, even as the Steadfast Rubber Company was pumping fresh toxic chemicals into the pond at the same time, via their concrete culvert at the corner of Oliver Street next to the entrance to David Ames' house. This illegal, toxic discharge only stopped after my cousins Todd and Peter Heino and myself put the weird vaseline-type gook coming out of the pipe into mason jars and walked the jars down Elm Street to Mary Connolly at the Easton Board of Health. We were about 11 at the time (Pete was 8). Thanks to Mary, soon after, the discharge of weird toxic goop from the cement pipe into Shovelshop Pond suddenly stopped.
Today, the multi-year dredging of Shovelshop and Langwater Ponds on Queset Brook in the mid 1970s would be totally prohibited by natural resources conservation laws. These activities were also prohibited by federal and state law in the 1970s but were allowed to "squeak through," which is shorthand for "don't tell us much about it and let's hope nobody sues you/us."
Up until about 2000, the dam at Shovelshop allowed the water of Queset Brook to flow down into its original channel, in a deep ravine next to Pond Street, until it was impounded again by the backwatering effect of the dam at Langwater beneath Main Street.
Since about 2000, the heirs/assigns of the Ames family stopped up the dam completely and increased the level of Shovelshop Pond by about three feet, causing Queset Brook to flow down an artificial channel several hundred yards to the north and along the Ames property formerly owned by David Ames. As a result, the original channel of Queset Brook along Pond Street is now virtually empty and the "new channel" created by this raising of the pond level is marked with numerous large "No Trespassing" signs. In effect, the entire free-flowing section of Queset Brook from Shovelshop to Langwater Pond has been usurped by David Ames' heirs/assigns and moved onto their posted property.
My visit to the brook on Sunday, Dec. 6, 2009 shows the Ames heirs/assigns have removed all the vegetation along the brook and place large obstructions (cut logs) in the brook channel itself. While I understand the Ames heirs/assigns might wish to have a nice, neat lawn going right to the bank of Queset Brook, it's kind of against the law.
Interestingly, my brother Tim told me about wandering around the brook below Parker's Pond around 2000-2001 and seeing trout jumping at the base of Parker's dam. That same fall, at Thanksgiving, I was walking down North Main Street across from the Ames Free Library and noticed a trout spawning nest (called a redd) in Queset Brook just below where the brook exits the tunnel beneath the street. These redds are very distinctive because the female trout use their tails to dig a depression in the stream gravel in which they deposit their eggs. They then move a few feet upstream and dig another depression and the current pushes the stones downstream to cover the eggs. Curious about our observations, Tim consulted the late Joe Cardoza who told him that during this time, the state had been putting some trout in Shovelshop in the spring, as Joe said, "for the kids to catch."
Apparently the trout Tim saw jumping at the base of Parker's dam had swum up from Shovelshop and were living in the brook, and based on my observation, had spawned in the brook that fall. Whether the spawning was successful, I am not sure, however, since trout spawn in late fall, it shows the water conditions in the brook remain good enough to support trout through the critical low-water and high temperatures of the summer months. This also shows how useful it would be if the trout could get over Parker's dam and be able to utilize the entire brook up to Flyaway and Ames Long Pond. It's all about connectivity and the lack thereof.
What Is to Be Done?
Damned if I know. Okay, I'll bite. If I was King of the World, I'd breach all four dams -- Hoeshop, Parker's, Shovelshop and Langwater -- and let Queset Brook revert to its natural channel, creating an immense amount of green space and wildlife habitat in North Easton village, and restore the necessary conditions for trout to resume living in Trout Hole Brook. The logical first step would be to breach the old wooden Hoeshop dam, since it impounds very little water and is partly on conservation land owned by the Town of Easton. This would fully restore Queset from Parker's to Flyaway and Ames Long Pond, and more important, would restore connectivity from the brook above Parker's to the thermal refugia in the brook coming from Lincoln Springs. The next thing I'd do is test the water in that little brook to see if it is being affected by the chlorine used at the Town Pool. It is illegal to discharge chlorine into a waterbody in concentrations that affect aquatic life. So that needs to be checked out. And, at a minimum, I would put fish ladders at Langwater, Shovelshop and Parker's to restore connectivity. Given the springs which Joe Cardoza said they hit digging out Langwater in the 1970s, it's possible that the water in the deepest parts of the pond are cold enough and oxygenated enough to act as thermal refugia for trout during the critical summer months.
Anyways. Here's a little movie Tim and I made when we walked around Lincoln Springs and up to Flyaway and Picker Pond a few Thanksgivings ago. This is the source of cold, pure water that kept the native brook trout of Trout Hole Brook alive. The first frame shows one of the spring holes bubbling up from the bottom of the Town Pool. You can hear the guns from the Ames Rifle & Pistol Club in the background. The music is by Ali Farka Toure, from his album "Radio Mali."
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Sturgeon at Norridgewock, Maine, on the Kennebec River and Sandy Rivers.
A "scute" or skin plate of an Atlantic sturgeon, recovered from a 2,000 year old shell midden near Bristol, Maine, July 2005.
Art Spiess, senior archaeologist with the Maine Historical Preservation Commission, sends along some more details of a recent archaeological dig at the Norridgewock Mission site, dated 1695-1724. Feature 15 at the site, a straight sided, flat bottomed storage cache, contained 469 fish bones, of which 77 could be identified to species. The breakdown is 1 sturgeon, 24 American eel, 3 alewife/shad, 22 white sucker, 1 striped bass, 4 yellow perch, 1 Atlantic salmon, 21 hornpout (bullhead). The data are from a 2002 Ph.D. thesis by Ellen Cowie. [Note: the numbers refer to individual bones identified to species, not the number of individual fish.]
What is striking about this find is the wide variety of fish species present, including most of the above-tidal migratory fish species native to the Kennebec, as well as three non-migratory species, white sucker, yellow perch and hornpout. The only native migrating fish not present in the cache are sea lamprey, rainbow smelt and tomcod.
Most surprising is the presence of sturgeon, which according to conventional wisdom, did not migrate up the Kennebec past Ticonic Falls in Waterville, Maine, 30 river miles downstream from Norridgewock. The find of a sturgeon raises the "carried there or caught there" conundrum. In order for the sturgeon to have been caught 30-50 miles downriver, it would have to have been smoked hard at the capture site to keep it from spoiling and then transported back upriver for 30-50 miles and then, finally, eaten.
Locations of sturgeon remains from Kennebec River Native American habitation sites.
This raises the obvious question of why someone would go through all of this effort to catch a sturgeon at tidewater, smoke it, and then paddle 30-50 miles against the current up to Norridgewock before eating it. Why not just eat where it was caught? Why not eat it at some point during the long, hard 50 mile canoe trip back upriver?
The great variety and number of fish in the cache shows there was no shortage of fish to be caught at or nearby the Norridgewock mission site. Why make such an effort to catch, smoke and transport a single fish from 30-50 miles downriver when there was an abundance of fish to be caught on-site?
And why do we even need to question whether the sturgeon was caught at the site or not?
The reason is that conventional wisdom holds that sturgeon did not migrate up the Kennebec past Waterville, 30 miles below Norridgewock. This belief is not based on information and evidence, but on a lack of information and evidence. Up until now there are no documented records of sturgeon above Waterville. There may be some, and only diligent search can turn them up, but to date, they have not. A problem with estimating a fishes' natural range by this method is that it violates the general evidence rule of science: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, ie. you can't draw a positive conclusion from a negative finding.
In contrast with sturgeon, there are independent lines of evidence which confidently rule out such hypotheticals as swordfish or bluefish swimming up to Norridgewock, since they cannot survive in freshwater. If a swordfish bone were found at Norridgewock we could say with confidence that it had to have been carried there from saltwater. As Thoreau said, "sometimes circumstantial evidence can be quite strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." But unlike a swordfish or whale bone, there is no reason a sturgeon at Norridgewock would be like "a trout in the milk."
Five foot long Atlantic sturgeon leaping in the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine. The entire photo sequence is here.
Looking at the documented migrational range of sturgeon in other Atlantic coast rivers, we find that the distance from Norridgewock to tidewater on the Kennebec (approx. 50 miles) is well within the migrational range that sturgeon are known to travel. A sturgeon swimming 50 miles above tidewater is not an unusual behavior or occurrence. It is quite normal.
The discrepancy between archaeological evidence and the 'conventional wisdom' of the range of sturgeon is not confined to the Kennebec River. On the Penobscot, the 'conventional wisdom' holds that sturgeon did not migrate past the ledge drops at Indian Island in Old Town. Yet there is a well-known record of burned, calcined shortnosed sturgeon bone from the Hirundo site in Alton, Maine on Pushaw Stream, a number of miles upstream from Indian Island. This aerial view shows the rapids at the Hirundo site, Pushaw Stream, Alton, Maine. Pushaw Stream drains Pushaw Lake, which historically held a very large alewife population. Shortnosed sturgeon conduct their spawning runs in early to mid-May, at the same time as alewives. A weir fishery for alewives at this site would intercept shortnosed sturgeon present.
This map shows the location of sturgeon bones found at the Hirundo site on Pushaw Stream in Alton as compared with the location of the alleged 'impassable' barrier for sturgeon at Old Town and Milford.The risk associated with an over-reliance on 'conventional wisdoms' is shown at the State of Maine and University of Maine's official 'scientific synthesis' website for the Penobscot River. This resource cites the Hirundo archaeological site as one of three places on the Penobscot River where sturgeon bones have been found, but goes on to say in the next sentence, "Most likely, sturgeon historically ranged as far up the Penobscot as Milford, where natural falls and ledges prevented them from migrating any farther upstream." A small problem is that the Hirundo site, on Pushaw Stream, is located well above the ledge drops in Milford. The same page states the Penobscot River is the "northern limit" for Atlantic sturgeon, even though the supporting scientific link for this statement correctly states that Atlantic sturgeon live as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence and southern Labrador. This resource is further contradicted by an 1825 eyewitness description of 20-40 pound striped bass in the middle and lower Piscataquis River, 30 miles above Milford. These basic errors of fact show why sources relying on a 'conventional wisdom' approach require careful scrutiny.
Steve Fernandes with a medium sized shortnosed sturgeon from the Penobscot River.
Junction of Kennebec and Sandy Rivers near Norridgewock Mission Settlement, Norridgewock, Maine. The Sandy enters from the opposite side.On the Kennebec, in contrast to the Penobscot, the archaeological record prior to 2000 agrees with the "best conservative guess" of an upstream limit of sturgeon somewhere near Ticonic Falls in Waterville. Prior to the Norridgewock find, the farthest upstream prehistoric records of sturgeon were at the junction of the Kennebec and Sebasticook Rivers in Winslow and one mile up the Sebasticook at the outlet of China Lake Stream. With the Norridgewock find, the migration limit of sturgeon shifts upstream by at least 30 miles to the falls on the Kennebec at Madison and the Sandy River up to Farmington Falls. While this more than doubles the natural range of sturgeon in the Kennebec River, this revised range is well within the normal migrational range of the species documented in other U.S. and Canadian rivers.
Additional supporting evidence is provided by the recent capture of adult shortnosed sturgeon at the very top of Ticonic Falls by the dam owner, FPL Energy, during spring flashboard replacement. Due to the configuration of the low dam spillway at the top of the ledges at Ticonic Falls, it is apparent that if the concrete dam spillway were not present at the site, the shortnosed sturgeon captured by FPL at the toe of the spillway would have been able to continue swimming upstream.
Unlike statements in old historical records, the remains of sturgeon bones in an archaeological site are direct, physical evidence of presence. Their existence at a site must have an explanation. In this instance, there are only two possible. The sturgeon either swam to Norridgewock or was caught 30-50 miles downriver, smoked to prevent spoiling, and then carried to Norridgewock and eaten. Occam's Razor favors the former, as it requires far less special pleading than the latter.
If and when funding becomes available to conduct additional archaeological surveys of prehistoric habitation sites along the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers, faunal remains found at these sites should provide us with additional illumination on the natural range of all of the migratory fish native to these rivers.
Are sturgeon weak swimmers? You decide:
Monday, November 30, 2009
New Evidence Doubles Natural Range of Striped Bass in Kennebec River, Maine.
By Douglas Watts
Augusta, Maine
November, 2009
Conventional wisdom holds that striped bass (Morone saxatilis) did not migrate up the Kennebec River past Ticonic Falls at Waterville, Maine, 20 miles above the river's head of tide in Augusta, Maine.
Archaeological evidence suggests this may be wrong. Arthur Spiess, chief archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation
Commission, has gone through his research holdings and located a record of striped bass vertebra found in a recent excavation of a food cache at the late 1600s Kennebec Indian village at the junction of the Sandy and Kennebec Rivers in Norridgewock, Maine. The vertebra is in sufficiently good preservation to provide a positive identification to species (Spiess 2009, personal communication).
This finding expands upon recent archaeological research showing striped bass lived throughout the Sebasticook River drainage prior to 18th and 19th century dam building; and recent historic research on Maine's Penobscot River showing that large striped bass (20-40 pounds) migrated much farther up the Penobscot than previously thought.
Norridgewock is at the junction of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers, approx. 30 river miles above Ticonic Falls at Waterville and 10 miles above the large natural falls at Skowhegan.
Historic records and oral recollections, collected and summarized in Atkins (1867), show that alewives and shad migrated past Ticonic Falls on the Kennebec as far as the junction of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers in Norridgewock. Atkins states that alewives and shad could not ascend the Kennebec past a one mile series of falls and rapids just above Norridgewock, at Madison and Anson, Maine. Above these falls at Madison, Atkins found no records or recollection of alewives and shad, but found numerous records of Atlantic salmon. As for striped bass, Atkins states they "ascended as far as Waterville, and to some distance on the Sebasticook."
[Here is a movie snippet of Ticonic Falls in Waterville.]
Swum or Carried?
The use of archaeological digs to determine the natural range of a fish carries an obvious uncertainty. Was the fish caught somewhere else and carried to the site and eaten? Or was the fish caught at the site and eaten?
In some cases the distinction is easy. If the fish is a saltwater-only species, ie. a swordfish or mackerel, and is found 100 miles away from saltwater, we can conclude it had to have been brought there. With striped bass, the distinction is not so easy. The striper in question could have been caught miles away and carried to the site, or it could have been caught in the Kennebec River right next to the site in Norridgewock and consumed a few hours after being caught.
Norridgewock is about 30 river miles from Ticonic Falls in Waterville, where we know stripers live (since we see them and catch them). Dams prevent stripers from getting any farther up river. If the natural limit of stripers was at Ticonic Falls, then the striper eaten at Norridgewock would have to have been caught at or below Waterville and then transported 30 miles upriver to Norridgewock.
By canoe, the upriver 30 mile trip from below Waterville to Norridgewock would take at least several days. Even a downstream canoe trip on the Kennebec only covers about 15-20 miles a day. Paddling against the current would at least halve this. If we assume 10 miles a day upstream by a very strong paddler, the trip from Waterville to Norridgewock would take three days. A striped bass transported this distance would be seriously decayed and inedible if left out dead for three days at "room temperature." It would be .. err... ripe. This makes it hard to imagine how a striper could have been caught below Waterville and brought to Norridgewock to be eaten there.
The next question is whether the striped bass found at Norridgewock could have been caught and preserved by smoking or salting well down river and then brought up river. Native Americans smoked fish to preserve them, particularly alewives and shad. Striped bass can be smoked, so it is at least possible the striper in question at Norridgewock was caught well down river smoked and brought up to Norridgewock where it was eaten and its bones were discarded.
Now let's look at other reasons why or why not this striper might have been caught at Norridgewock.
How far do striped bass migrate up New England rivers?
The short answer seems to be as far as they can, especially if there are large runs of alewives and shad and eels to feed on. The only thing which seems to prevent the upstream migration of striped bass on large rivers are impassable falls, or in this era, impassable dams.
The conventional wisdom on the Kennebec River is that Ticonic Falls in Waterville was, for striped bass, an impassable falls. We have no evidence to prove this. All we have is a brief statement by Atkins (1867) that striped bass did not migrate above the falls. Because the falls have been dammed since the early 1800s, there is no way to determine today if striped bass would migrate above the falls if they were in their natural condition and not dammed.
We know from Atkins that alewives and shad migrated well above Ticonic Falls, all the way to Norridgewock, 30 miles farther upriver. We know that striped bass follow alewife and shad migrations up river to eat them. Given these facts, there would be a definite reward for stripers to continue migrating upriver past Ticonic Falls to feed on alewife and shad. The question then becomes if the physiology of striped bass prevents them from ascending falls that alewives and shad can pass.
Alewives and shad migrate falls by swimming through them, unlike Atlantic salmon, which can leap out of the water to get over falls that are too steep to swim through. Alewives and shad do this by finding the most effective passage route and using what is called "burst swimming" to get through small areas with very high current velocities, ie. at the lip of a falls. Burst swimming is an extremely energetic swimming motion that fish can only sustain for a short period of time. Is there any evidence that striped bass lack the "burst swimming" ability of alewives and shad?
What is the swimming speed of a fully laden Kennebec River striped bass?
Research by Castro-Santos et al. (2005) shows a clear difference in the response of clupeids (alewives, blueback herring and shad) vs. striped bass, walleye and white sucker to a high velocity challenge in experimental flumes. But the authors note, "The consistent failure by the nonclupeids to switch to the distance-maximizing groundspeed for sprint mode means that these species are less likely to successfully traverse velocity barriers, even though such success is within their physiological capacity."
This finding suggests that nothing in the physiology of striped bass prevents similarly sized striped bass from ascending the type of velocity barriers ascended by alewives and shad. Instead, their reluctance (when they exhibit it) seems more likely behavioral. Unlike shad and alewife, the upstream migrations of striped bass well above the head of tide are driven by feeding, not spawning, especially for stripers which have yet to reach sexual maturity. Striped bass do not have the sexual/survival imperative to migrate far upstream that alewives and shad possess during their upstream migrations.
It's a lot more important for alewives and shad to get past difficult instream obstacles, and it's less important for striped bass, and for this reason, alewives and shad seem to have an instinctive tendency to devote far more time and energy to ascending an obstacle than striped bass of similar size.
The experimental observations of Castro-Santos et al. suggest striped bass will only ascend difficult falls opportunistically and will only devote a discrete amount of time and effort to do so. If water and flow conditions are conducive to passage, X number of stripers below a falls will find successful passage routes, ascend the falls, and follow the migration of alewives and shad and feed on them. If and when flow conditions at a falls make passage very difficult, fewer stripers will decide to invest in the effort and fewer will pass over.
This reasoning is supported by the fact that the post-spawning mortality rate of alewives, blueback herring and shad is in the range of 50 percent in New England river systems. This mortality is in part due to these fish becoming so physically exhausted, battered and withered during their spawning migrations that they do not survive after spawning to return to the ocean. From a genetic sense, it is worth it for a sexually mature alewife or shad to exert tremendous energy to reach ideal spawning habitat, even if this expenditure greatly reduces their chances of surviving after spawning.
The act of trying to swim over a difficult falls places a fish in great risk of being caught and eaten or injured by fish-eating birds such as great blue heron, cormorants, osprey and bald eagle, as well as mink, otter, black bear and seals, which patrol and set up feeding stations at these sites. Unlike alewives and shad, striped bass have much less at stake in getting above these falls, and appear less willing to accept the level of risk that alewives and shad accept at the same site. [Footnote: Since the Edwards Dam was removed in Augusta in 1999, harbor seals have been repeatedly observed at Ticonic Falls in Waterville during alewife and shad runs; 18th century records describe black bear catching alewives from Worromontogus Stream, which enters the Kennebec in Gardiner, Maine.]
From this evidence it seems implausible to discount the opportunistic migration of striped bass at the same sites where alewives and shad are documented to pass because there is no evidence that striped bass are physiologically less able than alewives and shad to swim past the same instream obstacles.
How big are Ticonic Falls?
Ticonic Falls is in downtown Waterville and Winslow, Maine. Like most "falls" on New England coastal rivers, they are not actual waterfalls, but a river section that flows over bare bedrock, creating turbulent rapids. The dam at Ticonic Falls is of mid-19th century construction and on the falls itself consists of a poured concrete wall anchored in the ledges. This wall is anywhere from 6 to 10 feet higher than the natural ledge and creates a 1 mile long impoundment of what was naturally a long section of rapids called "College Rips." The concrete wall/spillway appears to be built at the top lip of the falls. For this reason, much of the original falls are still in their natural condition, and at low river flows one can walk all around them and examine them in detail. I have done this for many years to study exactly how fish get up the falls to the toe of the concrete spillway, where their progress, unfortunately, is completely stopped.
What I found is that virtually every diadromous fish native to the river are able to swim all the way through the falls to the toe of the concrete spillway, including alewife, blueback herring, stripers, sea lamprey, juvenile American eel as well as exotic species such as small brown trout and smallmouth bass. Investigations conducted since 1999 by the dam owner, FPL Energy, during flashboard replacement at the spillway in late spring, have found adult shortnosed sturgeon and Atlantic salmon at the toe of the spillway as well. Because the toe of the concrete spillway is built on the surface of the natural ledges, this suggests that if the concrete spillway were not present, all of these species would be able to swim over the ledges and continue upstream.
This raises the question of why Atkins suggested Ticonic Falls as the natural upstream migration limit for striped bass on the Kennebec River. Atkins wrote this in 1867, or 30 years after all fish migration up the Kennebec River had been stopped by construction of the Edwards Dam in Augusta. Atkins was unable to observe any migratory fish in the Kennebec River above Augusta during his lifetime. Instead, he was forced to rely on scattered written records and the 30-50 year old oral recollections of people who knew the river before it was dammed in 1837. By Atkins' time, these people were getting hard to find. Atkins' statement that stripers "ascended as far as Waterville" suggests he could not find any records or observations of striped bass above Waterville and decided to phrase his range description. His method can be seen in the way he described stripers as going "to some distance" up the Sebasticook in his original 1867 report, but in his 1869 report changed this to say stripers went a "short distance" up the Sebasticook. This editing suggests Atkins preferred to underestimate the natural, pre-dam range of fish species in the Kennebec River unless he had compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. This preference by Atkins is important, since his work has become virtually the sole basis for all modern estimates of the natural range of diadromous fish in the Kennebec and other Maine rivers. [Footnote: Recent documentary research at the Maine State Archives and Maine State Library shows Atkins missed a large number of historic records from the late 1700s and early 1800s when he published his 1867 and 1869 reports. These records were available to Atkins at the time, but for unknown reasons he did not use them.]
Different migration windows
The upstream migration of clupeids in river systems are determined by the timing of their sexual clocks. Each species, alewife, blueback herring, and American shad have a finite and limited migration window in which they must successfully negotiate instream obstacles in a river to get to their natal spawning habitat.
On the Kennebec at Waterville, the migration window for alewives is late April to late May, and for blueback herring and shad the window is from mid May to mid June. To reach preferred spawning habitat before their sexual organs "command" them to spawn, all three species must negotiate the river on a narrow and circumscribed schedule of 4-6 weeks.
In contrast, striped bass migrating upriver solely for feeding purposes have sexual constraints on their migration window. Unlike spawning clupeids, if flow conditions at a falls are not conducive to passage until early or mid summer, the stripers can wait. The reward for waiting for a passage opportunity at a falls is that the stripers gain access to an enormous amount of riverine habitat for feeding that is comparatively empty of competing predators. The stripers that pursue and succeed in the opportunity to get over falls get to go to the "top of the feed line." On the Kennebec, a striper patient and strong enough to pass over Ticonic Falls gains access to miles and miles of ideal habitat in the middle portions of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers which is comparatively barren of competing predators but is full of juvenile alewives, blueback herring, shad and eels. The growth and survival advantage for striped bass who select this option cannot be discounted.
Implications for restoration of striped bass
The Kennebec River is one of the few large river systems north of the Hudson which had a native, spawning population of striped bass (Atkins 1869; Squiers 1988; Dadswell 1996). The presence of native striped bass in the Kennebec River is due to the lack of impassable falls above tidewater. This allows sexually mature stripers to swim far enough up river so their free-floating eggs can hatch before encountering waters with a salinity in excess of 1 ppt.
Dam-building on the Kennebec River after 1837 severely constrained the ability of native striped bass to move far enough upstream to successfully spawn. Removal of the Edwards Dam at the Kennebec's head of tide in 1999 has restored access for striped bass to 20 miles of above-tidal river habitat between Augusta and Waterville, Maine. Removal of the Fort Halifax Dam at the mouth of the Sebasticook River in Winslow, Maine in 2008 has created the potential for restoring access for striped bass to its native habitat in the vast 1,000 square mile Sebasticook River drainage, the Kennebec's largest tributary.
Impassable dams still prevent striped bass from freely ascending the Kennebec past Waterville and the Sebasticook past Benton Falls, six miles from its mouth. Regulatory decisions on whether to allow striped bass to migrate upriver past these dams have been solely based on historic records gathered by Atkins (1867). Archaeological evidence from both rivers shows that striped bass migrated up the Kennebec and Sebasticook Rivers much farther than contemplated by Atkins, greatly increasing the natural, historic range of striped bass in the Kennebec River system compared to what has been previously assumed. Based upon this new evidence, fisheries agencies in Maine should ensure that any striped bass attempting to enter fishlifts at the Lockwood Dam on the Kennebec River in Waterville and at the Benton Falls Dam on the Sebasticook River are safely passed upriver into their native habitat upstream.
This new evidence shows the need for fisheries scientists to work closely with archaeologists to factually establish the natural range of diadromous fish species in river systems, especially those heavily impacted by damming in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like all New England rivers, the Kennebec was heavily dammed beginning in the early 19th century and for this reason, delineation of the natural range of diadromous species in these river systems must be pieced together through obscure and fragmentary documentary sources. Archaeological evidence provides a critical ground truthing to assess the veracity of later records which rely upon secondary historic sources. To gain access to the archaeological record, fisheries scientists must get to know archaeologists working in the same watershed and ask what they know and what they have found. Often, as in this case, a detail considered very minor to archaeologists (a striped bass bone from the 1600s in Norridgewock, Maine) can be valuable evidence for a fisheries scientist trying to piece together the natural range and habitat of diadromous fish species and the pre-industrial ecology of northeast coastal river systems.
References:
Atkins, C. 1867. Maine Fish Commissioners Report in Twelfth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Maine Board of Agriculture. Stevens & Sayward. Augusta, Maine.
Castro-Santos, T. 2005. Optimal swim speeds for traversing velocity barriers: an analysis of volitional high-speed swimming behavior of migratory fishes. Journal of Experimental Biology, 208 (3), 421-432 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.01380
Dadswell, M.J. 1996. The Removal of Edwards Dam, Kennebec River, Maine. Its Effect on the Restoration of Anadromous Fishes. Prepared for the Kennebec Coalition. Augusta, Maine. March, 1996.
Squiers, T. 1988. Anadromous Fisheries in the Kennebec River Estuary. Maine Department of Marine Resources. Augusta, Maine.
Spiess, Arthur. 2009. Unpublished archaeological records from the database of the Maine Historical Preservation Commission, Augusta, Maine.
Augusta, Maine
November, 2009
Conventional wisdom holds that striped bass (Morone saxatilis) did not migrate up the Kennebec River past Ticonic Falls at Waterville, Maine, 20 miles above the river's head of tide in Augusta, Maine.
Archaeological evidence suggests this may be wrong. Arthur Spiess, chief archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation
Commission, has gone through his research holdings and located a record of striped bass vertebra found in a recent excavation of a food cache at the late 1600s Kennebec Indian village at the junction of the Sandy and Kennebec Rivers in Norridgewock, Maine. The vertebra is in sufficiently good preservation to provide a positive identification to species (Spiess 2009, personal communication). This finding expands upon recent archaeological research showing striped bass lived throughout the Sebasticook River drainage prior to 18th and 19th century dam building; and recent historic research on Maine's Penobscot River showing that large striped bass (20-40 pounds) migrated much farther up the Penobscot than previously thought.
Norridgewock is at the junction of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers, approx. 30 river miles above Ticonic Falls at Waterville and 10 miles above the large natural falls at Skowhegan.
Historic records and oral recollections, collected and summarized in Atkins (1867), show that alewives and shad migrated past Ticonic Falls on the Kennebec as far as the junction of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers in Norridgewock. Atkins states that alewives and shad could not ascend the Kennebec past a one mile series of falls and rapids just above Norridgewock, at Madison and Anson, Maine. Above these falls at Madison, Atkins found no records or recollection of alewives and shad, but found numerous records of Atlantic salmon. As for striped bass, Atkins states they "ascended as far as Waterville, and to some distance on the Sebasticook."
[Here is a movie snippet of Ticonic Falls in Waterville.]
Swum or Carried?
The use of archaeological digs to determine the natural range of a fish carries an obvious uncertainty. Was the fish caught somewhere else and carried to the site and eaten? Or was the fish caught at the site and eaten?
In some cases the distinction is easy. If the fish is a saltwater-only species, ie. a swordfish or mackerel, and is found 100 miles away from saltwater, we can conclude it had to have been brought there. With striped bass, the distinction is not so easy. The striper in question could have been caught miles away and carried to the site, or it could have been caught in the Kennebec River right next to the site in Norridgewock and consumed a few hours after being caught.
Norridgewock is about 30 river miles from Ticonic Falls in Waterville, where we know stripers live (since we see them and catch them). Dams prevent stripers from getting any farther up river. If the natural limit of stripers was at Ticonic Falls, then the striper eaten at Norridgewock would have to have been caught at or below Waterville and then transported 30 miles upriver to Norridgewock.
By canoe, the upriver 30 mile trip from below Waterville to Norridgewock would take at least several days. Even a downstream canoe trip on the Kennebec only covers about 15-20 miles a day. Paddling against the current would at least halve this. If we assume 10 miles a day upstream by a very strong paddler, the trip from Waterville to Norridgewock would take three days. A striped bass transported this distance would be seriously decayed and inedible if left out dead for three days at "room temperature." It would be .. err... ripe. This makes it hard to imagine how a striper could have been caught below Waterville and brought to Norridgewock to be eaten there.
The next question is whether the striped bass found at Norridgewock could have been caught and preserved by smoking or salting well down river and then brought up river. Native Americans smoked fish to preserve them, particularly alewives and shad. Striped bass can be smoked, so it is at least possible the striper in question at Norridgewock was caught well down river smoked and brought up to Norridgewock where it was eaten and its bones were discarded.
Now let's look at other reasons why or why not this striper might have been caught at Norridgewock.
How far do striped bass migrate up New England rivers?
The short answer seems to be as far as they can, especially if there are large runs of alewives and shad and eels to feed on. The only thing which seems to prevent the upstream migration of striped bass on large rivers are impassable falls, or in this era, impassable dams.
The conventional wisdom on the Kennebec River is that Ticonic Falls in Waterville was, for striped bass, an impassable falls. We have no evidence to prove this. All we have is a brief statement by Atkins (1867) that striped bass did not migrate above the falls. Because the falls have been dammed since the early 1800s, there is no way to determine today if striped bass would migrate above the falls if they were in their natural condition and not dammed.
We know from Atkins that alewives and shad migrated well above Ticonic Falls, all the way to Norridgewock, 30 miles farther upriver. We know that striped bass follow alewife and shad migrations up river to eat them. Given these facts, there would be a definite reward for stripers to continue migrating upriver past Ticonic Falls to feed on alewife and shad. The question then becomes if the physiology of striped bass prevents them from ascending falls that alewives and shad can pass.
Alewives and shad migrate falls by swimming through them, unlike Atlantic salmon, which can leap out of the water to get over falls that are too steep to swim through. Alewives and shad do this by finding the most effective passage route and using what is called "burst swimming" to get through small areas with very high current velocities, ie. at the lip of a falls. Burst swimming is an extremely energetic swimming motion that fish can only sustain for a short period of time. Is there any evidence that striped bass lack the "burst swimming" ability of alewives and shad?
What is the swimming speed of a fully laden Kennebec River striped bass?
Research by Castro-Santos et al. (2005) shows a clear difference in the response of clupeids (alewives, blueback herring and shad) vs. striped bass, walleye and white sucker to a high velocity challenge in experimental flumes. But the authors note, "The consistent failure by the nonclupeids to switch to the distance-maximizing groundspeed for sprint mode means that these species are less likely to successfully traverse velocity barriers, even though such success is within their physiological capacity."
This finding suggests that nothing in the physiology of striped bass prevents similarly sized striped bass from ascending the type of velocity barriers ascended by alewives and shad. Instead, their reluctance (when they exhibit it) seems more likely behavioral. Unlike shad and alewife, the upstream migrations of striped bass well above the head of tide are driven by feeding, not spawning, especially for stripers which have yet to reach sexual maturity. Striped bass do not have the sexual/survival imperative to migrate far upstream that alewives and shad possess during their upstream migrations.
It's a lot more important for alewives and shad to get past difficult instream obstacles, and it's less important for striped bass, and for this reason, alewives and shad seem to have an instinctive tendency to devote far more time and energy to ascending an obstacle than striped bass of similar size.
The experimental observations of Castro-Santos et al. suggest striped bass will only ascend difficult falls opportunistically and will only devote a discrete amount of time and effort to do so. If water and flow conditions are conducive to passage, X number of stripers below a falls will find successful passage routes, ascend the falls, and follow the migration of alewives and shad and feed on them. If and when flow conditions at a falls make passage very difficult, fewer stripers will decide to invest in the effort and fewer will pass over.
This reasoning is supported by the fact that the post-spawning mortality rate of alewives, blueback herring and shad is in the range of 50 percent in New England river systems. This mortality is in part due to these fish becoming so physically exhausted, battered and withered during their spawning migrations that they do not survive after spawning to return to the ocean. From a genetic sense, it is worth it for a sexually mature alewife or shad to exert tremendous energy to reach ideal spawning habitat, even if this expenditure greatly reduces their chances of surviving after spawning.
The act of trying to swim over a difficult falls places a fish in great risk of being caught and eaten or injured by fish-eating birds such as great blue heron, cormorants, osprey and bald eagle, as well as mink, otter, black bear and seals, which patrol and set up feeding stations at these sites. Unlike alewives and shad, striped bass have much less at stake in getting above these falls, and appear less willing to accept the level of risk that alewives and shad accept at the same site. [Footnote: Since the Edwards Dam was removed in Augusta in 1999, harbor seals have been repeatedly observed at Ticonic Falls in Waterville during alewife and shad runs; 18th century records describe black bear catching alewives from Worromontogus Stream, which enters the Kennebec in Gardiner, Maine.]
From this evidence it seems implausible to discount the opportunistic migration of striped bass at the same sites where alewives and shad are documented to pass because there is no evidence that striped bass are physiologically less able than alewives and shad to swim past the same instream obstacles.
How big are Ticonic Falls?
Ticonic Falls is in downtown Waterville and Winslow, Maine. Like most "falls" on New England coastal rivers, they are not actual waterfalls, but a river section that flows over bare bedrock, creating turbulent rapids. The dam at Ticonic Falls is of mid-19th century construction and on the falls itself consists of a poured concrete wall anchored in the ledges. This wall is anywhere from 6 to 10 feet higher than the natural ledge and creates a 1 mile long impoundment of what was naturally a long section of rapids called "College Rips." The concrete wall/spillway appears to be built at the top lip of the falls. For this reason, much of the original falls are still in their natural condition, and at low river flows one can walk all around them and examine them in detail. I have done this for many years to study exactly how fish get up the falls to the toe of the concrete spillway, where their progress, unfortunately, is completely stopped.
What I found is that virtually every diadromous fish native to the river are able to swim all the way through the falls to the toe of the concrete spillway, including alewife, blueback herring, stripers, sea lamprey, juvenile American eel as well as exotic species such as small brown trout and smallmouth bass. Investigations conducted since 1999 by the dam owner, FPL Energy, during flashboard replacement at the spillway in late spring, have found adult shortnosed sturgeon and Atlantic salmon at the toe of the spillway as well. Because the toe of the concrete spillway is built on the surface of the natural ledges, this suggests that if the concrete spillway were not present, all of these species would be able to swim over the ledges and continue upstream.
This raises the question of why Atkins suggested Ticonic Falls as the natural upstream migration limit for striped bass on the Kennebec River. Atkins wrote this in 1867, or 30 years after all fish migration up the Kennebec River had been stopped by construction of the Edwards Dam in Augusta. Atkins was unable to observe any migratory fish in the Kennebec River above Augusta during his lifetime. Instead, he was forced to rely on scattered written records and the 30-50 year old oral recollections of people who knew the river before it was dammed in 1837. By Atkins' time, these people were getting hard to find. Atkins' statement that stripers "ascended as far as Waterville" suggests he could not find any records or observations of striped bass above Waterville and decided to phrase his range description. His method can be seen in the way he described stripers as going "to some distance" up the Sebasticook in his original 1867 report, but in his 1869 report changed this to say stripers went a "short distance" up the Sebasticook. This editing suggests Atkins preferred to underestimate the natural, pre-dam range of fish species in the Kennebec River unless he had compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. This preference by Atkins is important, since his work has become virtually the sole basis for all modern estimates of the natural range of diadromous fish in the Kennebec and other Maine rivers. [Footnote: Recent documentary research at the Maine State Archives and Maine State Library shows Atkins missed a large number of historic records from the late 1700s and early 1800s when he published his 1867 and 1869 reports. These records were available to Atkins at the time, but for unknown reasons he did not use them.]
Different migration windows
The upstream migration of clupeids in river systems are determined by the timing of their sexual clocks. Each species, alewife, blueback herring, and American shad have a finite and limited migration window in which they must successfully negotiate instream obstacles in a river to get to their natal spawning habitat.
On the Kennebec at Waterville, the migration window for alewives is late April to late May, and for blueback herring and shad the window is from mid May to mid June. To reach preferred spawning habitat before their sexual organs "command" them to spawn, all three species must negotiate the river on a narrow and circumscribed schedule of 4-6 weeks.
In contrast, striped bass migrating upriver solely for feeding purposes have sexual constraints on their migration window. Unlike spawning clupeids, if flow conditions at a falls are not conducive to passage until early or mid summer, the stripers can wait. The reward for waiting for a passage opportunity at a falls is that the stripers gain access to an enormous amount of riverine habitat for feeding that is comparatively empty of competing predators. The stripers that pursue and succeed in the opportunity to get over falls get to go to the "top of the feed line." On the Kennebec, a striper patient and strong enough to pass over Ticonic Falls gains access to miles and miles of ideal habitat in the middle portions of the Kennebec and Sandy Rivers which is comparatively barren of competing predators but is full of juvenile alewives, blueback herring, shad and eels. The growth and survival advantage for striped bass who select this option cannot be discounted.
Implications for restoration of striped bass
The Kennebec River is one of the few large river systems north of the Hudson which had a native, spawning population of striped bass (Atkins 1869; Squiers 1988; Dadswell 1996). The presence of native striped bass in the Kennebec River is due to the lack of impassable falls above tidewater. This allows sexually mature stripers to swim far enough up river so their free-floating eggs can hatch before encountering waters with a salinity in excess of 1 ppt.
Dam-building on the Kennebec River after 1837 severely constrained the ability of native striped bass to move far enough upstream to successfully spawn. Removal of the Edwards Dam at the Kennebec's head of tide in 1999 has restored access for striped bass to 20 miles of above-tidal river habitat between Augusta and Waterville, Maine. Removal of the Fort Halifax Dam at the mouth of the Sebasticook River in Winslow, Maine in 2008 has created the potential for restoring access for striped bass to its native habitat in the vast 1,000 square mile Sebasticook River drainage, the Kennebec's largest tributary.
Impassable dams still prevent striped bass from freely ascending the Kennebec past Waterville and the Sebasticook past Benton Falls, six miles from its mouth. Regulatory decisions on whether to allow striped bass to migrate upriver past these dams have been solely based on historic records gathered by Atkins (1867). Archaeological evidence from both rivers shows that striped bass migrated up the Kennebec and Sebasticook Rivers much farther than contemplated by Atkins, greatly increasing the natural, historic range of striped bass in the Kennebec River system compared to what has been previously assumed. Based upon this new evidence, fisheries agencies in Maine should ensure that any striped bass attempting to enter fishlifts at the Lockwood Dam on the Kennebec River in Waterville and at the Benton Falls Dam on the Sebasticook River are safely passed upriver into their native habitat upstream.
This new evidence shows the need for fisheries scientists to work closely with archaeologists to factually establish the natural range of diadromous fish species in river systems, especially those heavily impacted by damming in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like all New England rivers, the Kennebec was heavily dammed beginning in the early 19th century and for this reason, delineation of the natural range of diadromous species in these river systems must be pieced together through obscure and fragmentary documentary sources. Archaeological evidence provides a critical ground truthing to assess the veracity of later records which rely upon secondary historic sources. To gain access to the archaeological record, fisheries scientists must get to know archaeologists working in the same watershed and ask what they know and what they have found. Often, as in this case, a detail considered very minor to archaeologists (a striped bass bone from the 1600s in Norridgewock, Maine) can be valuable evidence for a fisheries scientist trying to piece together the natural range and habitat of diadromous fish species and the pre-industrial ecology of northeast coastal river systems.
References:
Atkins, C. 1867. Maine Fish Commissioners Report in Twelfth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Maine Board of Agriculture. Stevens & Sayward. Augusta, Maine.
Castro-Santos, T. 2005. Optimal swim speeds for traversing velocity barriers: an analysis of volitional high-speed swimming behavior of migratory fishes. Journal of Experimental Biology, 208 (3), 421-432 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.01380
Dadswell, M.J. 1996. The Removal of Edwards Dam, Kennebec River, Maine. Its Effect on the Restoration of Anadromous Fishes. Prepared for the Kennebec Coalition. Augusta, Maine. March, 1996.
Squiers, T. 1988. Anadromous Fisheries in the Kennebec River Estuary. Maine Department of Marine Resources. Augusta, Maine.
Spiess, Arthur. 2009. Unpublished archaeological records from the database of the Maine Historical Preservation Commission, Augusta, Maine.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
David Archer's Univ. of Chicago Climate Science Lectures
Prof. David Archer of the Univ. of Chicago and a contributor to realclimate.org, has posted videos of his class lectures in Climate Science for everyone to watch. This course is designed for non-science majors so is very light on mathematical equations and calculations, but is very thorough nonetheless.
Fun to watch. Like taking a college course without having to pay $1,000.
Fun to watch. Like taking a college course without having to pay $1,000.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Another Bad Day in the Denialosphere
A fairly random scattering of recent "thoughts" on science from readers of the American Spectator.
Bill| 11.24.09 @ 11:20AM
The Clinton Administration (i.e. Al Gore) implemented a revised measurement system of weather temps. They stated it would slightly increase the stated temps but, not to worry, all historical temp records would be updated (converted to) the new scale. If that did not happen, then all recorded temps since that time in the mid-90's would be higher than "comparable" earlier scale temps even if they were not.
---
Tish| 11.24.09 @ 1:28PM
My 7th grade science teacher taught me something about scientific research which has held up well over the intervening half-century: a 99% probability is still a 100% uncertainty.
----
Joe Olson| 11.25.09 @ 3:10PM
Dear John Ignorance is bliss, and you must quite blistfull. The 'manmade global warming hoax' is a century old arguement by the Progressives for their program of eugenics. Please read my articles "Strange Tale of Green House G as Gang" for this valuable history. The REAL cause of climate change is the variable Geo-nuclear energy as explained in my article "Motive Force Behind All Climate Change" and has nothing to do with CO2.
----
Douglas | 11.25.09 @ 10:25AM
I assure you the climate is changing because it always does. People are so self important they believe 50 years is a long time in geological terms. 10,000 years ago there was a mile of ice above where I sit. It melted for some reason. Why? The climate changed!
---
Chief1942| 11.24.09 @ 3:26PM
As a typical lay person with no specific training in the regimines of science and peer review, I will now be sceptical of much that "science" has professed for all my 67 years. I certainly am not painting with too large a brush ..
---
Joseph A Olson, PE| 11.24.09 @ 7:55PM
It is very important to put the century old carbon warming fraud in perspective....please read "Strange Tale of Green House Gas Gang" and "One Pleasant Day in Runnymede"....now that enough dots are visible it is easy to extrapolate the AGW position to it's ultimate goal....destruction of freedom and euginics for ALL.....
---
You have to read "Motive Force Behind All Climate Change."
Not of timecube quality, but junior varsity with a bullet.
Bill| 11.24.09 @ 11:20AM
The Clinton Administration (i.e. Al Gore) implemented a revised measurement system of weather temps. They stated it would slightly increase the stated temps but, not to worry, all historical temp records would be updated (converted to) the new scale. If that did not happen, then all recorded temps since that time in the mid-90's would be higher than "comparable" earlier scale temps even if they were not.
---
Tish| 11.24.09 @ 1:28PM
My 7th grade science teacher taught me something about scientific research which has held up well over the intervening half-century: a 99% probability is still a 100% uncertainty.
----
Joe Olson| 11.25.09 @ 3:10PM
Dear John Ignorance is bliss, and you must quite blistfull. The 'manmade global warming hoax' is a century old arguement by the Progressives for their program of eugenics. Please read my articles "Strange Tale of Green House G as Gang" for this valuable history. The REAL cause of climate change is the variable Geo-nuclear energy as explained in my article "Motive Force Behind All Climate Change" and has nothing to do with CO2.
----
Douglas | 11.25.09 @ 10:25AM
I assure you the climate is changing because it always does. People are so self important they believe 50 years is a long time in geological terms. 10,000 years ago there was a mile of ice above where I sit. It melted for some reason. Why? The climate changed!
---
Chief1942| 11.24.09 @ 3:26PM
As a typical lay person with no specific training in the regimines of science and peer review, I will now be sceptical of much that "science" has professed for all my 67 years. I certainly am not painting with too large a brush ..
---
Joseph A Olson, PE| 11.24.09 @ 7:55PM
It is very important to put the century old carbon warming fraud in perspective....please read "Strange Tale of Green House Gas Gang" and "One Pleasant Day in Runnymede"....now that enough dots are visible it is easy to extrapolate the AGW position to it's ultimate goal....destruction of freedom and euginics for ALL.....
---
You have to read "Motive Force Behind All Climate Change."
Not of timecube quality, but junior varsity with a bullet.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Good News for the Hockomock Swamp
According to the Brockton Enterprise, Massachusetts is too broke to build the planned railroad through the heart of the Hockomock Swamp.
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