River Herring at Wight's Pond

an outreach piece from College of the Atlantic's Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities course 2023

On April 19th, College of the Atlantic’s Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities course visited Wight's Pond in Penobscot, Maine. Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities–endearingly known as Fish Fish Fish–is an undergraduate course focusing on local fishing community dynamics in Downeast Maine. A number of students in the course went on a field trip to Wight's Pond to assist in installing a fish counter. Wight's Pond is a part of the Bagaduce watershed and is an important habitat for river herring that spawn in this water every spring.

drag the arrows to experience the satellite and terrain views of Wight's Pond, Penobscot, Maine. Zoom out to get a view of the broader coast of Maine.

River Herring and Fish Runs

River herring play a critical role in freshwater and marine ecosystems and are economically and culturally important to Maine’s coastal communities. River herring are anadromous fish, every spring they leave their saltwater habitats and swim upriver to spawn. River herring refers to both alewives and blueback herring. These species are present all along the east coast of the United States, from Maine to Florida. They spend their lives at sea and return to freshwater to spawn. River herring also bear the name sawbellies due to the sharp backward facing scales on their underside.

Fish runs refer to an annual migration effort where anadromous fish –including alewives, blueback herring, and shad– swim upstream to spawn. Fish runs are monitored every spring and provide important data on the number of fish navigating the waterway and returning to spawn. This information helps inform management strategies and harvesting limits.

For additional information check out the  NOAA River Herring species card  and this  Sea Grant article on sea-run fish 

Working on the Bagaduce Watershed

The Bagaduce watershed and Wight's Pond are important locations for anadromous fish migration. River herring run up into Wight's Pond to spawn. For our class trip we drove to Wight's Pond in Penobscot, Maine. We met with Bailey Bowden, a steward of the Bagaduce Watershed, Mike Thalhauser, a collaborative management specialist with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries (MCCF), and Cappy, a friend of Bailey’s.

We helped install a fish counter where the pond narrowed into storied pools. First we put down sandbags to funnel the flow of water into a central location, fish will follow the area of highest flow.

We were introduced to the fish counter, a large cage that can be opened or remain closed for counting, and we began to imagine its function in the waterway. We then lowered the fish counter off the bridge into the middle of the high flow. A group of people lowered the counter off the bridge, a set of people installed it in the correct position in the water and another set of people tied ropes off at the edges of the stream to hold it steady.

This process took a lot of concentration on our part and a decent amount of instruction from Bailey. Next we installed plywood boards on both sides of the fish counter. This allows fish to return downstream after spawning.

After some hard work and laughter the fish counter was securely in place. During previous years Bailey has done this all by himself! We have no idea how– it took many hands to make this possible, but that speaks to Bailey’s almost superhuman presence!

For more information on the Bagaduce watershed visit the  Bagaduce Watershed Association website .

Caring for the Waterway

Here's our insight on Bailey's relationship as a steward of the Bagaduce watershed.

Bailey Bowden is a lifelong resident of Penobscot, Maine. He has closely nurtured his relationship with the Bagaduce River and continues to spend his time observing and appreciating living species and ecosystems they call home. This includes ponds, streams, rivers, wetlands, and intertidal zone. His observations over the extended period of time of his life are a valued resource to the Penobscot community that shares the goal of advocating for the fishery. His passion for fishing and recreation spawned a personal desire to become incredibly involved in the conservation and sustainability of the alewife fishing industry in response to the Department of Marine Resources' suspension of alewife fishing rights in Penobscot in 2011. Among the many hats he wears he is the chair of the Alewife Committee which was established in 2015. The committee’s duties include collecting all biological data, including the number of fish entering the pond, as required by State and Federal authorities. This data is used to determine if the alewife run can be harvested in a sustainable manner.

Some of Bailey’s most remarkable work has been done in Wight Pond, Penobscot where he has engineered a passageway for alewives to return to their spawning grounds. He collects data such as the monitoring of zooplankton levels in the ponds and estuaries, which helps to determine how well-nourished the fish are and how that affects their growth rate and reproductive potential. This project is also involved in collecting samples to gather DNA and gauge the ages of the fish that are returning to spawn. His advocacy extends to educating and informing people of all ages and backgrounds in a way that connects people to the fish and their journeys. His knowledge as a fisherman that knows the network of the Bagaduce watershed provides years' worth of information that is crucial to understanding the obstacles faced by this keystone species. Bailey’s ability to effectively communicate the ongoing changes in the watershed’s ecosystem informed our class on the significance of the alewife fishery in Penobscot and demonstrated to us how we can participate in community-driven science. 

This video of alewives swimming upstream through the fish counter was taken on 10 May 2023 by Bailey Bowden.

Our field trip to visit Wight’s Pond was the first interaction with river herring that our class had this spring. Bailey introduced us to a valuable perspective of river herring stewardship that acted as a strong basis for our further work with river herring. On Earth Day we visited the Somesville fish run and helped to repair the fish run and channel the river’s flow for fish passage. Throughout the course there have been many opportunities for students to continue working with alewives in Somesville, where community members are welcomed and encouraged to sign up for fish counting windows that happen three times a day and occasionally get to participate in scale collection, sexing, and sizing the fish. This data gets sent to the Maine Department of Marine Resources and determines the age of the fish. There is a lot of fulfillment that comes with seeing fish return to spawn. Accounting for each alewife creates a connection to each individual fish and their respective journey. The process of counting fish cannot be done without your full attention and presence in the moment. During a fish count you are encouraged to observe everything happening around the run such as the weather, water temperature, and the other species nearby that may interact with the fish. We also visited the Penamaquan River in Pembroke, Maine where we watched the river herring run. There was an impressive number of fish in that run! Seeing the water teeming with life is a significant event for everyone involved. Chris Petersen (College of the Atlantic), Michael Manning and Kirstin Underwood (Downeast Salmon Federation), and Chris Bartlett (Maine Sea Grant) measured and sexed a subsample of fish. Additionally, there was an alewife festival that weekend so we were able to observe people’s interactions with the fish and the excitement that a fish run incites. 

Fish passage restoration efforts led by community members aid in the conservation of sea run fish. These efforts engage community members, have a positive effect on river herring populations, and improve local ecological systems.