July 8, 2012 – The Washington County fight to open up the St. Croix River to millions of alewives has brought together a once-divided tribe, created foes among inland smallmouth bass interests and mobilized advocates on just about every jurisdictional level. Now, a fish's fate – and a county's – hangs on what happens next.
It's late in the alewives' spring run, and overnight just five fish have climbed the fish ladder at the Milltown Dam, which spans the St. Croix River on the Maine-New Brunswick border.
At the top of the ladder, which climbs around the back of the 131-year-old dam, the fish are waiting in a cagelike trap when Lee Sochasky arrives to count and release them. One 10-inch female — fish No. 36,168 of the season — is kept for scientific analysis. Big, healthy and filled with eggs, she is likely 5 years old, meaning she hatched in the straight stretch of river between here and the Woodland Dam, 10 miles upstream. In the intervening years she has likely traveled to Georges Bank and possibly as far south as North Carolina. This spring she — and 36,000 other alewives — headed home to the St. Croix to reproduce.
If the fish's advocates have their way, in future years she might be part of spring runs numbering in the millions.
Not everyone is happy the alewives are here, and others don't want to see their numbers grow. Some see them as an invasive pest that could undermine the ecology of the lakes and streams of the sprawling St. Croix basin, wiping out the sport fisheries on its many lakes and ponds. Others hold they are not only native to the St. Croix, they are essential to its restoration, a forage fish key to rebuilding populations of everything from salmon to cod.
The humble fish are now the subject of a federal lawsuit, a diplomatic appeal to an international body and a state of emergency declared by three chiefs of the Passamaquoddy tribe, who want the fish restored.
The future of the alewife runs — currently confined to the lowest stretch of the river on orders of the Maine Legislature — will likely be decided in Augusta, and lawmakers can expect to hear an earful. At stake is the ecological future of a 1,600-square-mile swath of lakes, rivers and forests in Maine and New Brunswick and an even greater expanse of undersea habitat in eastern Maine.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald.