Bring Them Back ...

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Bring Them Back ...

By DAVE SHERWOOD

Outdoors Writer

Imagine that you and a thousand of your closest relatives were going on a trip -- 2,000 miles by water -- to Greenland. This trip wouldn't be a vacation, but rather, a pilgrimage.

You would go whether you liked it or not. You'd eat little or nothing for the better part of your voyage, and could expect to be attacked by hundreds upon thousands of vicious ocean going predators along the way -- from both above and below.

By the time you returned to your home, between two and four years later, you might well be the only one left.

Witness the life of a Sheepscot River Atlantic salmon.

For thousands of years, they've survived. They returned even when river-driven logs sealed the water in perpetual darkness, when cattle trampled its banks, and when poachers camped out at Sheepscot Falls and speared fish under the cover of a new moon night.

Now, in just 20 years -- a sliver in their nearly timeless existence, they've virtually disappeared from the Sheepscot River. In the colonial era, they were so plentiful as to be used as fertilizer and bartered for goods and services. Even as late as the early 1980s there was an active hook-and-line fishery.

Now they're almost gone -- and nobody knows exactly why.

Does it really matter?

Absolutely, says Atlantic Salmon Commission Executive Director Pat Keliher.

Keliher, 37, is a passionate sportsman, former Kennebec River fishing guide and executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA). At CCA, he'd been a part of one of the greatest success stories in fisheries management -- the comeback of the striped bass.

Now, with the Atlantic Salmon Commission, he's dealing with one of its biggest disasters.

But this time, it's not just about a fish.

"We're attempting to restore an entire ecosystem here. A lot of money gets spent on salmon restoration, but what most people don't realize is that the money doesn't just benefit salmon -- it benefits everything in the river," Keliher said.

Keliher remembers once hooking an Atlantic salmon at the Reversing Falls on the Sheepscot River. It jumped, it took a long run, but he never landed it.

The salmon, the rivers and the fishery are a part of Maine's heritage, and a vital indicator of the health of our ecosystems. He wants to see them return.

On Thursday morning, Nov. 18, Keliher, commission biologist Paul Chrisman and planner Melissa Halsted were hoping to intercept the last of the Sheepscot's remaining salmon on a small, but critical part of their voyage. In the fall, they return to spawn near their birthplace, in the headwaters of the river.

SEARCHING FOR REDDS

Chrisman and fellow biologists survey the Sheepscot two times each fall, searching for salmon redds. A redd is a salmon spawning area on a river or streambed. It usually consists of two pits -- one egg pit, and another, just above, that's "excavated" by the fish to provide gravel for burying the eggs.

The process goes like this: the hen, or female salmon, digs the first pit by sweeping away gravel with strokes of its tail. Then it's joined by a male, who supplies the milt to fertilize her eggs. After the eggs are released and fertilized, she moves just upstream from the spawning site and digs the second pit, kicking gravel and sand downriver and thereby covering the eggs. This protects them from predators and anchors them in place for the winter.

During spawning, the sediments, aquatic vegetation and river "slime" are removed from the gravel, leaving a clear, bright spot in an otherwise dark river bottom. These "redds" are visible from the bank, and are an indication of how many salmon have returned to the river.

"They're like a neon sign," Chrisman said.

As he walked down the bank, his well-trained eyes scoured the steambed, searching for signs.

Here, in the Sheepscot's upper reaches, the river flows through a nearly unbroken forest of hemlock, white pine, beech and oak. The streambed is a mix of fine gravel, fist-sized rocks and some boulders.

Along the well-traveled fisherman's path to the water, a whitetail deer buck had scraped a note in the leaves to a hopeful companion. A ruffed grouse thundered from streamside alders. Beaver sticks, chewed to a bright yellow core, floated downriver. A pileated woodpecker rattled and bobbed in the distance.

The water was low, but clear and tea-colored, like many of Maine's rivers. Salmon parr, or juveniles, and small brook trout scattered like scurrying mice from the air-clear pools as the crew shuffled downriver in waders and hip boots.

To the casual observer, the surrounding woods seemed almost pristine.

"I think I see one," Chrisman said. He pointed to a swath of gravel that almost glowed at the tail of a pool beneath an overhanging hemlock.

"Yup, it is -- the way this looks, I think she dug here, and probably didn't like the big rocks, they're too hard to move with her tail, so she tried over here. See how she cleared this whole area? This may have been a large salmon," Chrisman said, as he squatted down for a closer look.

He was recreating a scene that few have witnessed: salmon are a secretive fish whose travels are still a mystery.

"If you squint at these redds long enough, you can start to get an idea of how they were made," he said.

Redds like this one, said Chrisman, receive top priority.

"These are the big winners. People don't realize the tremendous journey this fish has made. She left the river when she was just 2 years old, not more than seven inches long, and traveled more than 2,000 ocean miles past all those hungry mouths, then came all the way back to her home river. You just can't protect these redds enough," he said.

But these successes don't tell the whole story.

Five redds translate into roughly 10 salmon, if you assume that each of five females mated with five different males. That's a run of just 10 fish so far this fall -- compared to hundreds that were registered 20 years ago.

Salmon are in a serious state of decline in Maine and in many rivers of Canada. There is no one, single reason for it -- no silver bullet, as Chrisman called it.

Salmon restoration is an overwhelming task.

Around the bend from this redd, a four-wheeler trail crossed the river. Tracks marred an eroded bank.

"If there'd been a redd in its path, we would have lost thousands of eggs. There needs to be education, people just don't know what's here," Chrisman said.

There are other problems: pollution, lack of overhead cover in the river, predation from seals and cormorants in the estuary below, competition from non-native brown trout, siltation, erosion, dams -- all these things disrupt the natural balance of the river, said Commission Planner Halsted, who has studied salmon, and the Sheepscot River, for many years.

Then there's the real question mark: the survival rate of salmon after they leave the river for the vast ocean.

Sound complicated?

It is.

That's why the salmon on this river, along with seven others on the Downeast coast of Maine, were listed as Endangered Species by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 2000. The other rivers include the Dennys, East Machias, Machias, Pleasant, Narraguagus, Ducktrap and Cove Brook.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Sheepscot salmon are part of the Gulf of Maine Distinct Population Segment (DPS) and represent "the last wild remnant populations" of Atlantic salmon in the United States.

"People don't realize that there's an endangered species -- a truly amazing fish -- that swims right through their backyards here on the Sheepscot," Chrisman said.

NO EASY ANSWERS

The lifecycle of an Atlantic salmon is incredibly complex. The eggs from this fall's redds will hatch in February, beneath the rocks and gravel where they were spawned and incubated. They then spend two years feeding and maturing in the river, as juveniles, or parr. At this stage, they are spotted, darker and well camouflaged to their river environment. They live near bottom, behind "home stones" -- rocks and boulders that part river currents, providing relief from fast-flowing waters and allowing them to ambush their prey.

But after two years, a mysterious biological calling draws them downriver. They become more buoyant. They can no longer tuck themselves behind their home stones. They start banding together in small clusters, or schools. They lose their stream camouflage -- the spots -- and turn silvery, a reflective color better suited for the ocean.

In just a month, two Aprils after their birth, they float down to the sea and virtually disappear in the vastness of the ocean.

This amazing natural phenomena is called smoltification.

It's also where the real mystery begins.

What happens to Sheepscot salmon after they leave the river? The state stocks more than 200,000 fry each year to supplement natural spawning, but only a handful ever return.

They're disappearing somewhere between the head of the tide and Greenland, but nobody knows exactly where, why or how.

Groups like the Atlantic Salmon Federation have worked hard in recent years to protect salmon outside of Maine's borders.

According to Andy Goode, Vice President of the non-profit Federation's U.S. programs, there's less than a one percent return of salmon to Maine rivers. The Federation helped negotiate an agreement with Greenland fishermen that suspended commercial fishing there for five years, hoping to boost the runs.

They've seen encouraging results and increased returns, but only on some rivers.

But the Salmon Commission works mostly to effect change locally -- on the rivers themselves. They incubate eggs streamside. They work together with hydropower companies to remove dams, or facilitate fish passage. They work with land trusts to preserve habitat along the river. They stock salmon, do fish counts, and monitor water quality. All of these things together, they hope, will make a difference.

"We work to balance a variety of uses: logging, farming, water withdrawal, blueberries, aquaculture. Our goal is to get these fish to the ocean so as many as possible come back," Keliher said.

If they do return, they come back as adults, ready to spawn. As parr, they imprinted on their natal, or home river, and will almost always spawn in close proximity to their birthplace.

By the end of the day, Chrisman had logged four redds.

He'd covered about a mile of river between redds, and had seen little since.

As he walked back to his truck, he caught a glimpse of something bright beneath overhanging alders.

There, hidden along the bank, was a fifth, fresh redd -- one that had almost gone unnoticed.

Chrisman studied it closely, like he does all of them, then marked it on a handheld GPS unit.

He shook his head in awe.

"We'll protect these redds, and do everything we can for them; but there's only so much we can do -- I hope these little guys make it," he said.

If you ask one of the Commission group why they're going through all this trouble, and seemingly insurmountable odds, to restore salmon -- they stumble.

It's an overwhelming task.

Jim Babb, author of an upcoming book on the natural and physical history of the Sheepscot River, and one-time fanatic salmon fisherman, perhaps said it best, "Having a river like the Sheepscot, with no salmon it, means you've basically given up. It's like asking, do we really need robins in the spring? Of course we do."

You can bet that Keliher and his crew won't be giving up anytime soon.

Dave Sherwood -- 621-5648

dsherwood@centralmaine.com