After three decades of disappointing numbers, New Hampshire is moving away from its tradition of releasing millions of baby fish into the Merrimack River watershed in hopes of restoring the state’s Atlantic salmon population.
Under a federal restoration program, salmon fry have been released in the Merrimack River watershed each year since 1976 in an attempt to bring back a population that was wiped out by overfishing, pollution and dam construction in the 1800s. Using eggs from returning salmon, the National Fish Hatchery in Nashua produces millions of juvenile salmon that are stocked through the watershed each spring.
The work involves carrying the inch-long salmon fry to release points along rivers and streams, where they grow for about two years before migrating to the ocean. Ideally, the salmon return to the rivers to spawn when they are about four years old, but that hasn’t often been the case.
In the program’s early days, officials hoped to see thousands of fish return each year, but achieving a sustainable salmon run has remained elusive, with an average of 121 adult salmon returning to the river each year. Until 2011, when a record 402 returning salmon were counted at a fish lift downstream in Massachusetts, the project met its annual target of 300 fish just once, in 1991.
Read the complete Associated Press article in The Boston Globe