Herring return to Taunton after removal of Mill River dam

Herring return to Taunton after removal of Mill River dam

By Marc Larocque
Taunton Daily Gazette
Posted Apr 30, 2013 @ 06:00 AM
Last update Apr 30, 2013 @ 08:47 AM

TAUNTON —

Alewife are swimming again at a city dam for the first time in many years.

The river herring are running through the former site of the Hopewell Mills Dam, according to the Nature Conservancy.

Over the last nearly two centuries, dams in the river clogged up the waterway, impeded migration and made the area uninhabitable for the fish, the environmental group said.

The dam was demolished last year by a partnership of state, federal and nonprofit entities working to restore the Mill River.

The Nature Conservancy, involved with the collaborative Mill River Restoration project, reported an underwater camera recently photographed the first alewife to pass the site this spring.

The group says fish are back at reaches of the river they have been unable to access since 1818.

"To have that fish come back is a symbol of nature's resilience," said Alison Bowden, director of the Nature Conservancy's freshwater initiative in Massachusetts. "We can restore the rivers and fish even when they've been gone for a long time."

The fish are being monitored through a research project being jointly funded by the Conservancy and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, as part of the effort to remove the dam and restore the river system in the Taunton area.

Bowden said the monitoring has been going on since April 1. She said that on the first day, an alewife was seen.

This so-called "pioneer" fish, as the Nature Conservancy phrased it, was soon followed by the early waves of the spring herring run.

"We've been seeing quite a few alewife come through right now, but it's hard to put a number to it," said Mike Bednarski, biologist for Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, who regularly monitors the fish at the site. "But passage rates have been as high as 40 fish per minute."

Pictures and video of the fish coming back to the Mill River can be found at www.millriver.blogspot.com.

Bowden said the next steps in the Mill River Restoration project will be the removing the Whittenton Dam this year and the Reed and Barton dam next year.

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