Atlantic Salmon Returns

Every Spring our chapter helps stock salmon fry in the tributaries to the Merrimack River.  We are helping to restore a run of fish that was wiped out by the dams and pollution resulting from the industrial revolution from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s.  The Clean Water Act and other legislation has helped clean up the rivers, but the dams built to power the factories and many currently used for hydroelectric power are still obstacles to anadromous fish which migrate to the ocean to feed and grow and then return to fresh water to spawn. The U. S. National Fish and Wildlife Service's Central New England Fishery Resources Office transports fish that are captured at the fish-lift at the Essex dam in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the first dam upstream from the ocean on the Merrimack River.  The Merrimack River Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited helps Ken Sprankle, the U.S. fisheries biologist for anadromous species, and other state and federal fisheries  biologists capture the fish, move them to a tank-truck and transport them to the federal fish hatchery in Nashua, New Hampshire, where the the eggs and milt are stripped from the fish to provide the fry that are stocked in the Spring-time.  In addition to Atlantic Salmon the program also captures and transports American shad and river herring.