Connecticut River American Shad Monitoring

American Shad

Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently completed a third year of cooperatively monitoring juvenile American shad in the Connecticut River.

Biologists collect data on abundance, length, and weight to assess the growth, survival, and productivity of the population.

This study is designed to help determine the impacts of dams on juvenile American shad. 19th century dams prevent adults from migrating upriver to find spawning habitat, contributing to the decline of the iconic species.

Young shad are a food source for smallmouth and largemouth bass, walleye, perch, and northern pike. Shad also provide food for birds and terrestrial mammals, as well as marine fish including striped bass.

While surveying the river, biologists captured an array of fish species. In addition to American shad, they captured a 25'' walleye, 35'' carp, and 19'' smallmouth bass.

source: Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife

Related Information

How To Catch Shad and Herring

Idaho Dutch Flat Dam Removal Could Benefit Steelhead

Dutch Flat Dam was a 10-foot barrier built nearly a century ago to provide drinking water to Troy, Idaho. The dam spanned the West Fork of Little Bear Creek, which ran so dry in summer that nobody thought steelhead survived there.

About a decade ago biologists realized that steelhead do, in fact, survive in such streams. It turns out that steelhead are able to survive dry periods by moving into pools cooled by underground flows.

Over the summer of 2013, local leaders and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game worked with federal agencies to take out the dam so steelhead can again move freely up the West Fork of Little Bear Creek. Crews finished removing the dam’s concrete in early September and are now widening a new course for the creek.

An inventory by Idaho Fish and Game about 10 years ago surprised many locals by finding steelhead throughout the Potlatch River drainage in small streams such as Little Bear Creek that mostly dried up in summer. It turned out that the fish survive the summer in remnant pools cooled by subterranean water.

As word of the steelhead spread, so did enthusiasm for removing the dam and reopening the West Fork of Little Bear Creek, said biologist Bob Ries of NOAA Fisheries. Enthusiasm grew even more when a local resident found steelhead spawning in the creek.

Biologists salvaged almost 180 fish from pools below the dam before the removal began and about three quarters were steelhead, Johnson said. It was the most steelhead they had ever captured in that reach, he said, suggesting that many fish stand to benefit from removal of the dam.

Snake River steelhead were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1997. Removing migration barriers and restoring access to high quality spawning and rearing habitat is considered critical for their recovery.

NOAA Fisheries and the Bonneville Power Administration provided $500,000 for the project. NOAA’s funding came from the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, a competitive grant program dedicated to restoring Pacific salmon and their habitat.

For more information, visit: http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/stories/2013/dutch_flat_dam_removal.html

source: NOAA Fisheries

Raritan River Dam Removal Projects

The removal of old dams from the Raritan River in New Jersey will allow migrating fish to fully access the middle and upper portions of the river for the first time in more than a century.

The dam removal project is being done and financed by El Paso Corp. (now Kinder Morgan, Inc.), under the terms of a landmark agreement secured last year by the DEP as compensation to the public for harm to natural resources caused by past pollution facilities operated by or affiliated with El Paso.

This second Raritan River dam to be removed is known as the Roberts Street Dam and was previously known as the Dead River Dam. It straddles Bridgewater and Hillsborough townships. Its removal will open up a large segment of the Raritan River for fish spawning.

The elimination of the Roberts Street Dam will further increase water flow and habitat improvements realized from removal of the Calco Dam in Bridgewater last summer, which was the first phase of this three-step process.

The removal of all three targeted dams will open up 10 miles of migratory fish habitat along a stretch of the Raritan that twists through a highly diverse residential, commercial and agricultural portion of Somerset County that includes Bridgewater, Hillsborough, Bound Brook, Somerville and Manville.

It also will open up about 17 miles of tributaries, including portions of the Millstone River, to spawning. None of the dams were built for flood control.

The targeted dams include:

The Robert Street Dam, a 6 ½-foot-high sheet piling and concrete dam located at river mile 27.9. It was constructed prior to 1930 for purposes that are not known today. This dam failed and was reconstructed in 1963.

Calco Dam, located at river mile 20.9 and built by the Calco Chemical Co. in 1938 to disperse chemicals from its facility. The dam was essentially a large concrete pipe spanning the river that most recently carried and dispersed wastewater into the river for the Somerset Raritan Valley Sewerage Authority. The authority constructed a new outfall for that purpose. Calco Dam was demolished in 2011.

The Nevius Street Dam, located at river mile 27. The rock and mortar dam was built in 1901 for aesthetic purposes and later retrofitted to provide water to ponds on the Duke Estate. The DEP and El Paso are working on a future plan to ensure the river continues to feed water to these ponds after the dam is removed. Removal is anticipated in 2013.

Fish that will benefit from the removal of the dams are American shad, American eel, herring, and striped bass, which once migrated in prodigious numbers through the gravelly shallows of the Upper Raritan.

The voluntary settlement with El Paso resolved Natural Resource Damage claims made by the DEP against the Houston-based company that stemmed from contamination at EPEC Polymers Inc. in Flemington, Hunterdon County; Nuodex Inc. in Woodbridge, Middlesex County; EPEC Polymers Inc. in Burlington City, Burlington County; and the Eagle Point Refinery in West Deptford, Gloucester County. Investigations and/or cleanups are under way at those sites.

The DEP uses funds secured from Natural Resource Damage settlements toward ecological restoration projects, typically in the same watershed or general area where resource damages occur.

For a copy of the settlement agreement, visit: http://www.nj.gov/dep/docs/elpaso-nrd-settlement.pdf

For more information on the DEP's Office of Natural Resource Restoration, visit: http://www.nj.gov/dep/nrr/

source: NJ DEP