July is here and with it all the manmade anadromous-fish passageways on Connecticut Valley dams will soon be closed, signaling the end of another disappointing spring spawning run.

How else to assess the 2010 migratory-fish numbers, which, through Monday, showed 167,486 American shad, 49 Atlantic salmon and a not-even-worth-reporting 92 blueback herring? Imagine that, 92 freaking herring, which came by the hundreds of thousands in recent memory. It may as well be zero the way I look at it. In fact, it makes you wonder when the numbers of all three aforementioned migratory-fish species will be just that: zero. Seems to be trending that way, no matter what the experts cashing state and federal paychecks would have you believe. The outlook is bleak. They know it. It’s all about climate change, stupid; has to be. That and other factors restoration people have little or no control over.

Many readers familiar with this column over the past 30 years inaccurately characterize me as a Connecticut River Salmon Restoration Program opponent. They’re wrong. A foe I am not, just a realist, one who has scrutinized the numbers over parts of five decades. I am not a numbers-cruncher. In fact, I hate numbers; would much rather play with words. But it doesn’t take a mathematician or scientist to understand that the numbers I’m speaking of ain’t good. And anyone who tries to tell you numbers don’t matter is a fool or a liar, your choice, because numbers do matter in scientific experiments, and that’s exactly what our salmon-restoration project is.

Salmon were indeed here when New England was discovered, and they remained here into the late Federal Period before disappearing due to the construction of dams and the end of the Little Ice Age, likely more the latter than the former. During the last half of the 20th century began an altruistic, aggressive, interactive federal and state restoration program aimed at establishing a viable salmon sport fishery to the Connecticut River and its largest tributaries. Ever since, officials overseeing the coordinated effort have given it their absolute best effort. No one can say otherwise. It was a valiant effort, with many of the finest hearts and minds committed. But their best efforts cannot overcome climactic and ecological changes that have in recent years decimated salmon stocks on both of our coasts, particularly the North Atlantic. Now scientists fear Atlantic salmon extinction. Yes, extinction, which, if it comes to pass will be sad indeed. Think of it: the greatest of all Atlantic freshwater game fish a thing of the past, history.

Isn’t fear of extinction the reason for putting Atlantic salmon on the endangered-species list? Is it not a possibility that they will all be gone by the time my grandsons are parents? Don’t doubt it. It’s real.

So let us not bury our heads in the Maritimes’ gravelly shores. It’s time to face facts. The days of fishing for migratory New England Atlantic salmon are over. Sad but true. In fact, it appears that the days are numbered for even a random New England salmon showing up here and there, especially in the Connecticut River, the mouth of which has in its best days been at the southern extreme of Atlantic salmon range. Maybe that’s what these grammar-school teachers bringing their students to the rivers’ edge for immature salmon-stocking field trips ought to be telling them; not that the fish they’re stocking will soon be back to spawn as adults; a romantic concept that unfairly keeps them on board for years to come, misleads them.

If there was anything really valuable at stake here — say a home, a family fortune, even a priceless heirloom — then there would be no one playing or encouraging others to play this game of impossible odds. It would then be called a con game, those promoting it swindlers.

Chalk it up as another disappointing year on the Connecticut River
anadromous-fish front.
With the Holyoke fish-lift closed for the 2009 season, a total of 76 Atlantic
salmon and 162,067 American shad were counted in the river. Add to that
the fact that blueback herring have virtually disappeared and it’s
starting to look very bleak. This year the herring total was 39. Is it really
worth counting anymore?
Sixty of the 76 salmon were captured in Holyoke. A breakdown of the
other 16 captured fish shows two taken at the Leesville Dam
on Connecticut’s Salmon River, 12 at the Rainbow Dam on Connecticut’s
Farmington River, and two at the Springfield Project on our Westfield
River. A straggler of two could still show up, but so what? The run’s
over. Why spin?
Ten free-swimmers were left in the river system above Holyoke, nine of
them were tagged for monitoring purposes, and seven are known to be residing
above Vernon, Vt. That leaves 66 at the Cronin National Salmon Station in Sunderland, where survivors will be nursed to optimal health for artificial fall spawning. The progeny from that spawning will ultimately be released into small streams in the Connecticut River system with little chance of ever reaching saltwater, never mind returning as adults to spawn in three to five years. Meanwhile, devoted Eastern Brook Trout anglers continue to carp about immature salmon competing with the native trout in their favorite
streams for a finite natural-food supply. They also complain about the
voracious little salmon disrupting their fishing experience by taking
their bait and alerting native brookies of their presence.
Friends of Atlantic-salmon restoration here in the Happy Valley
are dwindling with the salmon, shad and herring. Sad but true;
inevitable when numbers lay it out in bold black and white.
I guess the question is: Are a few better than none? Although I lean in
that direction, I would guess I’m in the minority.

The prevailing attitude has changed dramatically over the last decade.

A column about declining Eastern brook trout populations throughout the Northeast prompted a response from West County sportsman Bill Meyers, who identified a problem not mentioned in “Eastern Brook Trout: Status and Threats,” published by Trout Unlimited for the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture.
Meyers’ point is sure to ruffle feathers, which should come as no shock, given the source; Meyers is no shrinking violet when it comes to sportsmen’s issues.

The Meyers issue confronting West County “squaretails?” Well, try this one on for size: the immature Atlantic salmon being stocked annually into feeder streams of the Deerfield/Connecticut River system.

Hmmmm?

“A group of us who fish for native brookies has had a problem for years,” wrote Meyers in an e-mail. “The invasion of fingerling salmon into our native brookie habitat is the most serious problem confronting anglers today.”

Meyers says he’s mentioned this problem several times to state fisheries officials who offer deaf ears.

“Ask any native-brookie fisherman and they’ll tell you all they catch in the traditional mountain streams are aggressive salmon that have taken residence where they used to catch a lot of natives,” Meyers added. “It’s disappointing to see fry stocked in feeder streams where they have virtually a zero probability of achieving successful downstream passage once they mature, not to mention reaching returning to spawn as adults.

Meyers challenges locals to take a walk along the West County streams he’s referring to and assess the habitat, which he says is ideal to support a burgeoning brookie population. The problem, according to him, is that “the natives have been pushed out by someone who believes that by introducing all this salmon garbage into our mountain streams some act of God is going to happen. They’re barking up the wrong tree.”

An obviously irritated Meyers went on to criticize the Joint Venture, a brookie watchdog group made up of state and federal conservation groups, as a bureaucratic monstrosity that’ll ultimately prove ineffective. “This group will accomplish absolutely nothing other than establishing the brookie as threatened and trying to get federal/state monies to re-establish the population. Does this sound familiar, like a similar unsuccessful effort with another fish? They already destroyed a fishery that once offered exciting opportunities for fishermen. Hopefully some of the old-time native fishermen will speak up.”

I must admit Meyers is not the first local brook angler who’s complained to me loudly about pesky, stocked immature Atlantic salmon interfering with their trout-fishing. It’s a common complaint from people who fish some of my favorite old trout streams, such as West Brook in West Whately, the Bear and South rivers and Poland Brook in Conway, and Dragon Brook in Shelburne; and a good friend of mine has been wailing about the salmon in Clesson Brook for some time. The complaint is that the tiny voracious salmon attack any bait offered, live or artificial, and ultimately telegraph the angler’s presence, costing the angler trout he or she came to catch.

Atlantic-salmon-restoration true believers, even those who are Trout Unlimited members, have little sympathy for squeaky wheels like Meyers. It’s a greater-good issue to them, and thus trout fishermen are going to have to learn to deal with their “perceived” problem. It’s all about salmon with them, the glory fish that supersedes all others; and they’ll support this restoration effort against all odds, even impossible.

But how can these people justify turning their backs on the real native New England salmonoid, our Eastern brook trout, to many North America’s most beautiful freshwater fish?

A development in July 2006 gave hope for downstream spawning in the Connecticut River basin.

The last three salmon captured that summer were seined in Connecticut’s Salmon River, suggesting that the fish had taken residence there long ago, perhaps due to recurring heavy river-flow that prevented upstream migration well into June. Salmon start entering the river at Long Island Sound in April, seeking suitable spawning habitat in the upper reaches of the basin. However, when spring rains flood the lower valley, fish-passage facilities are temporarily shut down, delaying migration. Apparently, when flooding persists and keeps salmon trapped below Holyoke until the rivers reach to 70-degree range, those stragglers find suitable habitat well below their desired upriver destinations, in southern rivers like the Salmon and Farmington in Connecticut, and the Westfield River, where salmon activity in recent years has been encouraging. Were it not for manmade obstacles in Holyoke, Turners Falls, Vermont, Vt., and Bellows Falls, Vt., these fish would more likely be found in northern destinations like the Deerfield and Millers in Massachusetts, not to mention Vermont waterways like the West and White rivers.

While salmon-restoration officials would undoubtedly prefer the free-swimming fish to make it to their historic spawning grounds in Franklin County, MA., and above, they’ll take what they get pertaining to their struggling program. Thus the initiative on the Westfield River, where salmon are released annually above the DSI Dam to spawn naturally in the landlocked river system above that point. In 2006, two of 34 salmon captured on the Westfield were tagged and released to spawn in the river. The other 32 went to the Cronin National Salmon Station in Sunderland, where they’ll be nursed to optimal health prior to controlled fall spawning.

Colrain sportsman Billy Meyers chimed in about a perceived relationship between immature Atlantic salmon stocking and declining Eastern brook trout populations in their native western Franklin County hilltown streams.

He was responding to a one-source tirade against salmon stocking by Leyden octogenarian Edward M. Wells, who spent time on his grandparents’ Buckland farm as a boy and has more than a half-century of personal observation on which to base his opinion. To summarize his complaint, one which he composed in a stinging letter to MassWildlife last year, the immature salmon stocked into our native streams are competing for food and territory with the indigenous brook trout and thus pushing the rightful residents out. Meyers agrees, and voiced that opinion earlier in response to a column about a multifaceted, 17-state conservation initiative called the Eastern Brook Trout Venture. If anything, Meyers’ anti-salmon-stocking position has hardened since then, and shows no sings of softening anytime soon.

“Please keep this issue alive,” he wrote. “Last time it only lasted one column.”

Other hilltown trout anglers who chase tasty squaretail fingerlings for their black, piping-hot skillets concur. They view it as a mortal sin to “pollute” their native brookie streams with hatchery-raised salmon that 40-years-worth of data tells us have little chance of ever making it to Long Island Sound, never mind back again to spawn in the Connecticut River basin. The tragic victims, in their opinion, are not the salmon that fail to return, but rather the brookies displaced by the ravenous foreign fingerlings.

“Not only are the feeder streams being ruined, but the youth for the next generation is being totally deceived,” wrote Meyers, who pulled in the Iraq debacle to make a point about salmon-stocking programs introduced to the local elementary schools in recent years.

“Telling these kids their salmon are coming back is like strapping an explosive vest on 8- to 10-year-old Iraqis and telling them to go visit the U.S. troops for recess and return for lunch,” he wrote. “I am disgusted with this issue. The liberal flyfishing catch-and-releasers still believe they can win the war for the return of this doomed species.”

A respected New England fisheries insider who’s been skeptical about Connecticut River salmon restoration since Day 1 calls these disillusioned folks “true-believers” in the pejorative, comparing them to the Christian zealots who chase Virgin Mary sightings worldwide.

The point is that it’s impossible to reason with people whose beliefs are based on faith, not fact.

I was returning home from running the dogs when, as I climbed the gentle slope to my home, I spotted activity along the eastern perimeter of my yard, several vehicles, people milling about. Then, as I got closer, it was clear to me who they were. It was a salmon-stocking crew from the Connecticut River Coordinator’s office in Sunderland, solid individuals chasing the honorable dream of restoring Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River valley.

What an ironic twist of fate. Of all places in our expansive valley to set up shop, they had chosen the yard of a man many of them consider Public Enemy No. 1 of their program. Myself, I was humored by the development, determined to hospitably greet my guests once I kenneled the dogs, and that’s exactly what I did on a bright, pleasant, cheerful spring morning.

As I walked across my front yard toward the crew, two women were standing on the bed of a khaki-colored U.S. Fish & Wildlife truck, transferring tiny salmon fry from what was probably a 500-gallon circular tank into rectangular, five-gallon white pails, which were being walked to the banks of Hinsdale Brook for stocking. I reached the crowd, met eyes with a tall, light-curly-haired, approachable man wearing dark glasses and exchanged brief pleasantries before asking a simple question.

“Is it possible that Jan Rowan is among you?”

“Yes she is. That’s her standing right there on the truck.”

I moved close enough to lean on the truck, looked the Connecticut River Coordinator herself square in her shade-covered eyes and said, “I thought I’d come out to introduce myself. Do you know who I am?

“Yep, I do. I see your picture in the newspaper.”

So there we stood, political adversaries of sorts, but reasonable souls with nothing personal between us, meeting face to face for the first time. It was beautiful. Lo and behold, not only did I have the head honcho of the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program on my turf, but she was accompanied by none other than MassWildlife Anadromous Fish Project Leader Caleb Slater, the tall, pleasant man I had first spoken to. With them was a dedicated mixed-gender crew that probably curses me in their sleep for my unpopular opinion that their program is doomed to failure through no fault of their own. They know the numbers support my position but resent me nonetheless for making it public. But I’m not a promoter, I’m a newsman, and however you want to spin it, the news about salmon restoration in New England is not good. After more than four decades of stocking immature, hatchery-born, Connecticut River-strain salmon progeny into tributaries up and down the valley like the one that flows through my back yard, all they have to show is a hundred or two annual returns, certainly nothing to write home about.

It’s not the story I want to report now, or wanted to tell nearly 30 years ago, when I began tracking anadromous-fish-migration numbers for print. No, to be honest, I’d much rather sing praise of a success story akin to the turkey and bear and deer and striped-bass restorations we’re so familiar with. But those success stories bear absolutely no resemblance to this salmon-restoration effort, and if I’m worth my salt as a reporter, that’s what has to be written. I have no choice. It comes down to simple credibility, a newsman’s lifeblood. Without it I’m dead.

So, it was nice to meet the shepherds of our salmon program, to strike up a friendly conversation about a subject we cannot, for professional reasons, agree on. But it’s not personal. I hope they understand that.

I was e-mail queried the other day by an unknown reader who, it turned out, was a blogger interested in my opinion about continuing the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program, which began in 1967 with the now impossible goal of establishing a viable sport fishery.

The question read: “Gary, is it fair to say you’re against the restocking effort because it’s ineffective, or because it’d be good to use those funds in another way?”

I first spotted the query at work going through my Web mail during a brief dead spot, made a note of it and revisited it upon retuning home after midnight. That’s when my cranial wheels got to spinning like bald tires in a shiny black mudhole. Yes, I have often called the program a failure and cited numbers, ones the experts implore us to ignore, to support my position. No, we never will enjoy that pie-in-the-sky sport-fishery we set out to establish way back when. And now, with the herring runs bordering on extinction and shad runs greatly diminished due to global warming and other factors, all Connecticut River anadromous fish migrations could be endangered. Still, I can make a case for continuing the cooperative, interactive, 41-year-old restoration effort, which, despite the salmon failure, has been a positive conservational influence on streams big and small throughout the Connecticut River basin.

I guess it comes down to politics and philosophy, and anyone who has read this space for any length of time knows I’m no conservative. The question I ask myself is: Where would we be now if there had never been a salmon-restoration program? What would our Millers and Deerfield rivers look or smell like today? How about the Chicopee and the Westfield; what would their status be? So it really shouldn’t come down to one issue, salmon, when assessing the restoration program, because it runs much deeper than that.

I remember the Connecticut and Millers rivers when you wouldn’t want to stick your little toe into them for more than an instant, that filthy. Today people are water skiing and bird watching and swimming, all byproducts of salmon restoration and river clean-up.

And how can our evaluation of the failed program come down to dollars and cents given the trillions we’re wasting elsewhere on far more damaging, potentially world-altering adventures for the benefit of greedy billionaires?

So, yeah, the salmon program has been a failure. There’s no other way to evaluate it. And had the shepherds of the program done their homework before embarking on the project, they would have learned that the Connecticut River never was an important Atlantic salmon river, except for a perhaps a 300-year window during the Little Ice Age, which happened to coincide with New England settlement.

But pull the plug? Why?

Like I told the blogger who queried me: To me, the vocal critic, 200 annual salmon returns is better than none. But that’s just one man’s opinion, one who is light-years removed from mainstream political thought.

We could and often do spend far more on less worthy projects.

Published: Thursday, June 18, 2009

What you see is what you get. That’s about the status of anadromous-fish passage here in the Happy Valley.

If you’re content with maybe 200 Atlantic salmon and less than 200,000 American shad annually, rejoice, you’ve got it. Want more? Too bad. Ain’t happening anytime soon. Not now or ever. Case closed. Rhetoric be damned.

Yeah, I know, the recent gray, unsettled weather has stabilized the Connecticut River temperature in the mid-60s, prolonging the annual run. More shad and salmon may yet appear before it climbs to 70 and they stop migrating. Uh-hu, could happen. And maybe you’ll discover the money tree if you walk through the woods on enough hot, steamy days. Then again, perhaps if you suffer here on earth, there’ll be a better day in mythical paradise. Get the point? It’s all about that pot of gold. Some chase it. Some don’t. Count me among the latter. In my finite world, reality ain’t that hard to swallow.

I’ve seen the white, extended-cab, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service trucks out along our dirt roads in recent weeks, crews depositing immature Connecticut River-strain salmon progeny into our bubbly streams. I’ve seen them in my back yard, in Whately, in Conway, in Ashfield. You name it, for decades they’ve been there. True-believers, these altruistic souls doing the stocking. Totally committed. Ignore the numbers, they say. Numbers are irrelevant.

Imagine that: numbers meaningless, at least so long as they’re depressing. Tell me, do you suppose they’d still be meaningless if the salmon-count miraculously jumped to 1,000, 1,500, 15,000? Yeah, sure. Give me a break. Let that happen and you’ll hear about salmon numbers on your radio, your TV, in the newspapers (if any survive), and from the red-clad town crier with the long brass bugle. You couldn’t escape it if you tried. Sort of like Chandra Levy or Terri Shiavo. They’d slap you upside the head with their numbers then, the same ones they now call insignificant. And trust me, the media would swallow it hook, line and sinker, hawk it like a Fenway frank. ”Hear ye, hear ye!” they’d bark. ”Read all about it! The salmon are back!” They’d flash it on the tube, tease to it in the crawl along the bottom of the screen. Breaking news: long-lost salmon are back in New England.

But when the numbers are embarrassing, as they are today, it’s all about damage control, propaganda, classroom deception and field trips; chasing yellow swallowtails through goldenrod meadows. Patience, jackass, patience: that’s the message. Don’t you understand? Numbers are meaningless in scientific experiments. Yeah, right! Sounds good. And while you’re at it, stop by, I’ve found the Holy Grail in my attic. Honest. There it was, buried in a stack of old plates; cups and saucers; goblets, too. I’ll let it go cheap to a worthy man, if there is such a thing.

As much as I hate to admit it, I have been looking at the numbers for three decades; studying them, comparing them, trying to digest them, make sense of it all. Guess what? They’re trending in the wrong direction. Has anyone else noticed? Shhhhhhhhh. There I go again, mentioning numbers. I should realize by now that they don’t matter. How could I forget? Shame, shame, shame on me, the gadfly, buzzing in their faces, stinging the back of their necks, the small of their legs, burrowing into their eye sockets, their ears; no relief, an unmerciful pest. Oh, how the truth stings.

So, just in case you were wondering, 69 salmon and 157,000 shad had been counted in the river basin through Tuesday. That’s fresh off the federal Web site, updated daily; then confirmaton by direct e-mail straight from the Connecticut River Coordinator’s office. By the way, if numbers aren’t important, then why do they record them daily, annually, historically? Why don’t they hide them in the same vault with their expense sheets? You tell me. Sometimes it’s hard to figure.

All I can say is that I’m giving it my best shot. Not good enough, I guess, because I refuse to play the fool.

Truth is, it takes only a simple mind to see that something just doesn’t add up.

Octogenarian Edward M. Wells, a former Braintree educator enjoying blissful retirement nestled in Leyden’s gentle hills, has issues with our Connecticut River Atlantic salmon-restoration effort. First, he’s tired of stocked salmon progeny interfering with his native brook-trout angling along shaded, backwoods, Franklin County streams; second, he’s tired of the propaganda.

Wells was so stirred up last summer that he fired off a complaint to MassWildlife. He was reacting to “Brook Trout in Massachusetts,” a Kathleen Campbell article about conservation efforts aimed at rebuilding declining Eastern Brook Trout populations in the Northeast. The story was published in “Massachusetts Wildlife,” MassWildlife’s popular quarterly magazine. It was one of many stories, including more than one in this space, published in the Northeast last year during a media blitz by Trout Unlimited and the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture — a watchdog organization uniting private conservation and academic groups with 17 state fish and wildlife agencies and federal partners under one altruistic tent. The goal was to protect and build dwindling wild-brook-trout habitat, some of the best of which exists right here in our Franklin/Hampshire and southern Vermont hills.

Wells’ opinion, formed after three-quarters-of-a-century-worth of fishing experience on local streams, is that one quick way to protect our indigenous brookies is to quit polluting their native streams with foreign, hatchery-raised invaders called Connecticut River Atlantic salmon progeny. Mr. Wells stated his contentions succinctly in an erudite, July 10, 2006 letter to the editors of Massachusetts Wildlife. He’s still waiting for a response. Let’s excerpt the letter here:

“If the global attention now given to environmental issues is valid, it stresses that we humans must learn to control our waste products in a responsible manner. This does not include the delusional and irresponsible dumping of Atlantic salmon fry in our mixed-forest, glacially spawned, beautiful New England brooks, so unique and delightful.

“As a dedicated, non-purist, worm-fisherman who uses a modest, no-frills fly rod, I am distressed to spend an outing catching these huge-eyed, little nibblers who have usurped my favorite spots and greatly diminished the number of native trout by their consumption of the available stream nutrients.”

After praising state, federal and private organizations for a job well done improving the water quality of our Connecticut River and its tributaries as a byproduct of anadromous-fish restoration over the past 30 or 40 years, Wells gets back to his diatribe against salmon stocking:

“The unreasoned release of millions (literally) of raised fry and smolts is deceptive and counter-productive in light of the clear impossibility of these fish reaching Long Island Sound and returning to their spawning sites. The existence of multiple dams on almost all of our stream drainage precludes this. The Volstead Act (Prohibition) of the 1920s was a noble experiment also, but it was doomed (or damned) by its idealist frailty.

“To enlist school kids in these failed ecology projects is both deceptive and poor science. Give it up, please.”

Before we proceed, be it known that Mr. Wells does read this column but was not aware that I became an outspoken critic of our salmon program during the 90s, following exhaustive research on the status of salmon migration in colonial New England. It’s not that I’m against the program. Quite the contrary, I initially viewed the initiative favorably, and still accept it as worthwhile, albeit barely. My salient oppositional point has always been that we’re trying to restore a Connecticut River salmon run that was never great, even during the golden era of the Little Ice Age, which ended during the first quarter of the 19^th century. Even then the mouth of the Connecticut River was at the southern extreme of a North American salmon range defined by water temperature. So what hope exists with the earth warming at an alarming rate, and with it the water temperatures of historic New England salmon rivers like the Penobscot, Merrimack and Connecticut?

During the first 150 years of New England settlement, the sight of a 45-pound Atlantic salmon in the nets of shad fishermen below Peskeumskut Falls was a celebratory event, akin to a contemporary Colrain hunter bagging an 11-point, 205-pound racker. Salmon-restoration officials will dispute that informed opinion unless they do the research. But according to more than one critic within the professional anadromous-fish fraternity, the “true-believers” are not interested in history, and they’re not interested in numbers, either.

Imagine that! Doctors and masters of science who ignore numbers, the very basis of scientific experimentation. It’s true. Defenders of the salmon-restoration program must ignore numbers because they’re clear as a starlit February sky, screaming that the program has been a dismal failure. How else to describe an initiative that has deposited hundreds of millions of immature salmon into Connecticut River basin streams for an annual return of about 200? And let’s be honest: Two hundred salmon swimming up the Connecticut River basin is like a microscopic speck of dust floating in a 5000-gallon tank of water. You do the math. It ain’t encouraging.

The original goal of our salmon-restoration program was to create a recreational fishery on the Connecticut and its major tributaries, such as the Westfield, Deerfield, Millers, West and White rivers. Now, whispering officials will admit that initial goal will neven be realized, period. It’s out of the question. But they can’t admit it because there would be public outcry and potential program termination. So instead, the loyal employees shepherd a massive public-relations campaign aimed at what Wells calls “schoolkids,” who raise tiny salmon in their classroom aquariums and release them into local streams hoping they’ll return as spawning adults. Perhaps they should instead learn to pray, because the probability that one of their fish will return is about equal to winning the lottery. That’s what they don’t tell the kids, who will forever nourish a romantic myth planted by dishonest “education.”

“What really got to me was the way they manipulate the kids,” said Wells, 41 years a teacher. “I see the pictures and stories in the paper, smiling teachers and kids releasing salmon into our streams with the hope they’ll be back to spawn. It’s pure deception. They’re trying to put a happy face on an impossible dream.”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It gets worse. You see, Wells attended a student field trip to a local facility that sent his blood pressure skyrocketing. During a presentation, one of the workers told the idealistic students that it was comforting to know that someday his grandchildren would be able to stand on the banks of the Connecticut River and catch Atlantic salmon.

“He wasn’t telling the truth,” said Wells, emphatic that he’s not angry, just disappointed with the dishonesty. “He was a nice man, very knowledgeable, but what he told those kids was wrong, in my opinion. He knows a recreational salmon fishery is unattainable.”

At this point it’s not about truth and integrity; it’s about planting the seed of hope in future generations, political spin created to shape policy and keep the money flowing into a failed program. These committed, well-meaning scientists are not evil people worthy of scorn. They’re bright, articulate scientists attempting to perpetuate a myth and preserve a wonderful job located in a slice of paradise known as the Connecticut Valley.

I guess you can’t blame them for that.

June 27, 2007

A recent development relating to Connecticut River anadromous fish must have officials worried, and this issue has nothing to do with Atlantic salmon.

Yes, the salmon numbers are still pathetic. That’s a constant. But now there are storm clouds hovering over other marine species that migrate upriver annually to spawn, namely river herrings. The fact is that blueback herring and alewife have virtually disappeared from the river while American shad are greatly diminished. That could spell trouble on the horizon.

When criticized about disappointing salmon runs that have averaged around 200 over the past 40 years, restoration officials have tried in recent years to justify their program’s existence by pointing to the bountiful herring and shad runs brought about by major improvements in water quality and aquatic habitat. The small herrings have little or no value other than bait in the sportfishing community, but the recreational shad fishery is popular, drawing thousands of anglers annually. The current problem is that shad numbers have dropped from around a million annually to about 200,000, which is troubling. Do the math. Anglers with memories of fishing the Holyoke tailrace when 750,000 shad were lifted over that dam must notice a significant difference when a mere 170,000 are lifted there, and that’s been the case the past couple of years.

As an observer who’s followed the anadromous runs for nearly 30 consecutive years and fished often for shad during the 1980s, I noticed the plummeting numbers in the 90s and queried officials for answers. The most common explanation was that a striped-bass moratorium had greatly increased stocks of large, predatory stripers, a factor that could be directly related to diminishing river-herring numbers, including shad. But, frankly, that never made a lot of sense to a man who studies history, particularly New England and Connecticut Valley history. I think in the historical context, which pokes a gaping hole in the striped-bass-predation theory.

Haven’t river herrings and stripers always co-existed in the Connecticut River system? Weren’t there more large stripers and also more herring in the Connecticut River between the Contact Period and the Revolution than there are today? How, then, can we blame the disappearance of herrings on striped-bass predation? It defies logic.

Connecticut River Coordinator Janice Rowan says, “We have evidence that stripers are playing a role but questions remain about the size of that role.” So, in an attempt to answer that question, a study that began in 2005 is being conducted by University of Connecticut doctoral candidate Justin Davis and supervised by Associate Professor Eric Schultz, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Science and co-director of the Environmental Science Program.

“We agree that (the declining-herring issue) is not likely to be a single-factor story,” wrote Schultz in an e-mail. “The ocean fishery for herring may be playing a role, but quantifying that impact will be difficult. Other predators may be important. Other threats that should be considered include warming trends in coastal waters, rainfall patterns, and increasing water withdrawals in coastal regions.”

Davis and a research team have been electrofishing for striped bass and using a stomach pump to examine their diet, while another crew has been tagging a releasing stripers that will be tracked and studied.

According the Schultz: “We will be putting together several sources of data in this way: gut contents of striped bass combined with data and assumptions about digestion rates, yield estimates of how many river herring a striped bass in the Connecticut eats in a season. Our tag-recapture experiment will yield estimates of abundance of bass in the Connecticut, so that we can estimate how many herring are consumed by stripers in the river in a season. Our final intent is to put this in a historical context so that we can estimate what portion of the herring decline is attributable to striped bass.”

Schultz called the predation issue “size-dependent,” explaining that the stripers most likely to eat river herring are at about the 28-inch legal minimum for a keeper. However, smaller “schoolies” are more than capable of devouring many shad progeny, which are now readily available to them and other predators, such as marine bluefish and indigenous freshwater species. But, again, the fact is that those predators have always been present in the Connecticut, so how much of an impact could they really be having on the current decline.

The answer, based on historical precedent, is probably not much. Seems more like a porous excuse for what sadly may be a doomed program.