WOOLWICH, Maine — May 17, 2014 — While Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and North Carolina have imposed a fishing moratorium on alewives, some states allow limited inshore recreational and commercial fishing. Maine has the most concentrated alewife fishery in the nation, with harvesting allowed in 19 communities. At the same time, dozens of efforts are underway across the state to protect the fish.
Volunteer alewife counts are being done on Flanders Stream in Sullivan, at the Bristol Mills Dam on the Pemaquid River and on Patten Stream in Surry. Another one is in the works for Highland Lake in Falmouth. Almost all of the counts still need volunteers, until the season winds down around June 15.
Other counts are being done at fish ladders staffed by the Department of Marine Resources and hydroelectric dam workers on the Saco, Kennebec, Androscoggin and Penobscot rivers.
This year, volunteers and Department of Marine Resources staffers carried alewives by hand over the lower Togus dam in Chelsea.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald