Every Spring, fishery biologists and dedicated volunteers try to do the impossible – bring back the Atlantic Salmon to New Hampshire’s rivers and streams. Salmon disappeared from the state’s waterways in the 1850s because of dams, over-fishing, and pollution. But if they ever are to return this program is their best hope. One rainy day earlier this month, NHPR’s Raquel Maria Dillon joined a group of volunteers stocking salmon on the Smith River in Grafton.
Click here for more information about volunteering to stock salmon in the Merrimack's tributaries.
All Spring, this pickup truck has been trundling up and down New Hampshire’s back roads, carrying a precious cargo.
SOUND 08/:20 Clank, bang!
In a refrigerated tank in the bed of the truck, there’s a vat full of tiny salmon. Fisheries biologist John Greenwood is with the state Fish and Game Department.
GREENWOOD :15 we have approx 30,000 fish in the tank here today. We got 4 brooks, 11 volunteers, 5-700 fish per bucket.
The young fish came from the federal fish hatchery in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. But if they grow up here, they’ll remember this stream, and try return in four years to spawn.
GREENWOOD :10 they have a little yellow sac, we call them sac fry. These are sea run Atlantic salmon. Once they get rid of that yolk sac, they’ll be ready to feed on their own.
Each “fry” is less than an inch long. A lucky few that make it downriver will grow to be several feet long in the ocean off the coast of Greenland. They have a long way to go.
GREENWOOD :08 this is smith brook, a tributary of the Smith River. We’re going to, with the volunteers, stock out the salmon fry that we have here.
Biologists like Greenwood keep track of which tributary the fry go into, their parentage, and many of the fry carry a genetic marker. Biologists want to track these fish. They’re not for catching. Although they concede there’s no way to guarantee that won’t happen. They hope that in two years, when these fish head out to sea, they’ll be safe from fisherman, who won’t bother with a tiny, five-inch fish.
GREENWOOD :?? c’mon over here and get your fish!
The salmon fry are carefully measured out into buckets –about 600 fish in each. Each volunteer is deployed with a bucket to release them at strategic parts of the stream.
SOUND STREAM
GREG :05 how are you gonna get down? DOUG Just slide on your butt.
Doug Smithwood is a fishery biologist with the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service. On this school vacation week, he brought along his 11-year-old son Greg. They’re both decked out in rain slickers and waders, as they scramble down the steep bank.
GREG :10 Man, this thing’s got a current.
DOUG I’ll give you some fish if you fill that up a bit.
Smithwood teaches his son to look for the rippling, fast moving water, because predator fish like bass and trout lurk in the flats…
SMITHWOOD :18 it’s nice cool water, fast moving. Should have a lot of oxygen. Stay cool thru August. We have a certain number of fish we put per habitat area. these tribs have all been mapped extensively. We know how many fry can go in each of these.
They carefully dip the buckets to let a few fry swim out into the stream. The fish disappear instantly against to the dark gravel bottom.
This is good habitat but Smithwood says very few of these fish will actually make it out to sea and even fewer will survive to come back to spawn.
SMITHWOOD :05 It’s just not going to happen. There’s been 250 years worth of obstacles put in these fish’s way.
Obstacles that affect their habitat and their survival – pollution, predators, acid rain, higher river temperatures, over-fishing in the ocean, run-off from roads, and of course, dams…
SMITHWOOD :09 there’s 7 dams on the main stem river right now, only 3 have fish passages. There’s downstream fish passages, but not upstream.
For that reason, the few fish that even try to return will be captured at the bottom of the Great Stone Dam in Lawrence. Biologists will harvest eggs from the females and milt from the males, and grow more salmon fry to return to rivers like this one. If the fish survive, and if they make it back to the Merrimack , their offspring might find their way back to the Smith River.
SMITHWOOD :10 if people really want to restore Atlantic salmon to the Merrimack river. You have to have the long view. 20, 30, 50 years.
Smithwood says the restoration program is a stopgap measure, so that when the dams come down or get retrofitted with effective fish ladders, there might be a small population of fish that know how find the way back to the Merrimack to start the cycle all over again.
For NHPR News, I’m RMD, on the Smith River, in Grafton.
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