Biologist works hard
to duplicate Mother Nature's work
Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
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The season's first breath of arctic air held the surrounding 3,000-foot mountains -- Elephant, Reddington, Abraham -- captive, as if in a painting.
It's beautiful, inspiring country. But only a well-trained eye could identify it as salmon habitat.
"It baffles people, this far inland. But this is some of the finest salmon water in the entire state," said biologist Paul Christman as he scanned the pebbly river bottom through a hole he'd chiseled in the ice.
Together with a small team of biologists at the Atlantic Salmon Commission, Christman is leading an experiment to raise salmon from egg to adult in their native rivers, instead of the hatchery.
"That's the spot," he said, as he cleared floating bits of ice from the surface. He lowered a tray of live Atlantic salmon eggs into the frigid water.
He worked quickly, first scraping out a spawning bed with a spade, then pushing gravel over the delicate eggs -- big, smooth stones, then smaller rocks and silt.
"This is what the female would do if she were here," he said.
The last Atlantic salmon likely spawned in this stream in 1836, the year before Edwards Dam was built in Augusta.
Records show that Oberton, a tributary of the Sandy River, once had prolific runs of Atlantic salmon, offering prime spawning habitat to thousands of sea-run fish from the Kennebec.
Five dams in the central Kennebec Valley now isolate Oberton from the sea, but little else has changed. There is no development here. Roads are few and far between. The stream still runs pure and cold -- known only to beaver trappers and the occasional fishermen who ply its spring-fed waters.
HARD WORK
Duplicating nature's work is never easy -- in medicine, in science or even fish stocking.
Hundreds upon thousands of salmon, including juvenile "parr", 2-year old "smolts", even adults, have been stocked in Maine's salmon rivers over the years. Nearly 20 million dollars have been spent in research and restoration projects.
The result of these efforts is expiring runs, most so small that the Penobscot, a river that once boasted a run of millions of salmon, can muster only 1,000 fish per season.
Biologists are scampering for new solutions. This project is exciting, but still strictly research, said commission director Pat Keliher. He hopes the results of such experiments could someday make a difference on the Kennebec and elsewhere in Maine.
"We're trying to determine if we get better results with these eggs than with salmon reared in a hatchery," said Keliher.
"Instream incubation," as the project is called, requires time and effort -- but not nearly so much as raising salmon in a hatchery.
Nature, said Christman, takes care of feeding the young fish and maintaining water quality.
"This is research, not restoration. We're not asking for millions of dollars. It's really a grass-roots effort," he said.
Christman had driven two hours from Sidney over snowy roads to the small town of Madrid, followed by a 20-minute slog in four-wheel drive down a road that scarcely passed for a snowmobile trail. The salmon eggs rode beside him in the passenger seat, comfortably oblivious and submerged in an tattered five-gallon bucket.
For a salmon, it's a short trip compared to a 2,000-mile swim from feeding grounds off Greenland to the Maine coast.
"They've done this type of research out west and it's been very successful," said Melissa Laser, conservation planner with the commission.
But research out west, she said, has been limited to Pacific salmon. The verdict is still out on Atlantic salmon -- whose life cycle and habitat is considerably different.
Brandon Kulik, a biologist with Kleinschmidt Associates in Pittston, is also intrigued by the concept. Kulik has been surveying the fish of the lower Kennebec since Edwards Dam was removed in 1999.
"It's a work in progress. We view the Kennebec as the equivalent of a forest clearcut. Everything from the salmon to the minnows were cut. Now we have fertile soil and it's time to plant a few things and see what evolves from there. It's all a learning experience," he said.
NEW CHALLENGES
This spring, the newly constructed fishway at Lockwood Dam opens. Sea-run fish, including salmon, will have access to the river above Waterville for the first time in 169 years.
"We really have no idea what to expect in terms of numbers. I've heard stories of people catching and seeing salmon in the river while fishing for other species. It'll be a small number to start, though," said Florida Power and Light biologist Bob Richter, who will help manage fish passage at Lockwood.
As salmon begin to work their way up the Kennebec, Christman hopes it will awaken a new sense of awareness in local people.
"Oftentimes, we're working in a watershed and people don't even realize there were once salmon there. This was their great-great-grandparents, maybe. By the time the Civil War came about, salmon were already 20 years past," he said.
On quiet Oberton Stream, time has done little to change the environment. The salmon are gone, but native brook trout still swim in its gin-clear pools.
After carefully burying the eggs in the stream bottom, Christman stood quietly and admired the clean gravel through the ribbon of black ice.
"There isn't a day I come down here when I don't ask 'What would this be worth, to be hiking here and see two or three big Atlantic salmon swimming in that pool.' It would be priceless," he said.
He acknowledges these eggs won't amount to much. There are 8,000 or so at this site, and 40,000 total in the Sandy River drainage. That's the equivalent work of four or five wild salmon -- hardly enough to start a run.
Christman hopes advancing fishways and the removal of dams will someday allow salmon to swim freely to their historical habitat.
But everyone realizes self-sustaining runs are still years away on the Kennebec.
"We may be at the beginning of something much bigger. In 50 years, when I'm long gone, and there are salmon swimming in the Kennebec again, maybe there will be a book. And if there is, this would be chapter one," he said.
Dave Sherwood --621-5648
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