Chesapeake Shad Recovery Failing

Bay Journal, Shad recovery efforts not paying off, study shows

The American shad’s Atlantic population remains at a historic low, despite longstanding commercial fishing bans in several states and millions of dollars invested in restoring the fish’s habitat.That sober news comes from the most comprehensive survey yet of the species’ status on the East Coast and the first of any kind in 13 years. The sprawling assessment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission designates the shad population as “depleted” from Maine to Florida.

“There should be a lot more shad than there are out there,” said Michael Bailey, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist and one of the assessment’s authors.
In the Chesapeake Bay region, the study suggests that the rate of death among adult shad — a key measure of a population’s health — is “unsustainable” in the Potomac River but “sustainable” in the Rappahannock and York.

Once one of the largest commercial fisheries along the coast and around the Bay, shad catches have bottomed out at about 1% of their late-1800s levels. Although the shad fishery has all but disappeared in the Chesapeake, scientists contend that the species serves a critical ecological role in the estuary as a vital link in its food chain.

But shad are an anadromous species, meaning they spawn in freshwater rivers but spend most of their adult lives in the ocean before returning to their native river to reproduce when they are 4 or 5 years old. Because shad rely on so many different habitats, they face a barrage of challenges through all stages of life.

The species’ continued struggles are mostly blamed on the amount of potential habitat blocked by dam construction, a loss of about 40% of its historic range. But shad also face threats from climate change, polluted water, deadly run-ins with hydroelectric turbine blades and getting eaten by larger fish.

The Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates migratory fish in state waters along the Eastern seaboard, is grappling with whether more actions are needed to buoy the stock. The commission’s shad management board tasked a scientific panel Aug. 4 with recommending potential measures.

Fishery managers have been pulling regulatory levers for decades to help shad rebound but with little progress to show for it.

Commercial landings plummeted from about 50 million pounds at the beginning of the 1900s to 3.8 million coastwide by 1980. That year, Maryland imposed a moratorium on shad fishing. The Potomac River’s regulators followed suit in 1989; Virginia closed its rivers to shad fishing in 1994.

Ocean catches have been largely prohibited since 2005, but the new assessment finds no evidence that the action has breathed new life into the population.

While fishing was cut back, massive efforts were undertaken to boost the population. Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware launched hatchery operations to rear shad for release in their rivers. Hundreds of millions of larval shad “fry” have been stocked in recent decades.

Meanwhile, major efforts were made to reopen historic spawning areas to fish returning from the sea each spring. Since the early 1990s, tens of millions of dollars have been spent opening more than 1,000 miles of Bay tributaries to migrating shad. Where possible, dams have been removed, but most of the reopening has been achieved through the construction of fish passages.

Research has shown that shad use those constructed passages at relatively low rates.

So, they seem to have tried all the ways they know how, and nothing is helping. Maybe the problem is in the streams? Curiously, some streams in Virginia are doing much better.

 

 The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Elizabeth Taylor ready for your digital enjoyment.

WuFlu Killing Fish

Of course, it's not killing them directly, it's just preventing them from getting up to their spawing grounds and thereby endangering the next generation of the endangered fish. Bay Journal, Shad hatcheries, fish lifts fall victim to coronavirus

By this time in a typical year, the main fish lift at Conowingo Dam would be busy hoisting thousands of fish daily over the 94-foot high barrier, including a dwindling number of American shad and river herring, so they can swim up the Susquehanna River to spawn.

But the lift has been idle so far this spring, another victim of the coronavirus pandemic. Exelon Corp., which owns the hydroelectric facility, suspended fish passage operations just before they were to start.


Not running the fish elevator represents another setback for long-running efforts to bring American shad and river herring populations back from historic low levels in most Chesapeake Bay tributaries.

But it’s not the only, or even the biggest blow to the migratory fish — health concerns also prompted Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware to cancel their annual stocking efforts that collectively release millions of hatchery-reared shad into the Susquehanna and other rivers.

“It’s hard to do the work and practice social distancing,” said Josh Tryninewski, a biologist with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

Really? From what I've seen of hatcheries, they have many fish, and very few people, spread well apart.

Exelon spokeswoman Deena O’Brien said the power company decided in late March not to run the two fish lifts at Conowingo to comply with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s executive order that closed all but essential businesses. The dam is located in Maryland, about 10 miles upstream from where the Susquehanna meets the Bay.

The large lift on the east side of the dam normally runs from April 1 through the first week of June and carries migrating fish over the structure so they can reach spawning areas upriver. A much smaller lift on the west side, which is used in part to collect American shad eggs for hatchery stocking upriver, has also been idled.

In response to Hogan’s order, O’Brien said that Exelon had limited access to the dam in late March to only those staff needed to generate electricity. The contractors who normally operate the lift and monitor fish passage were deemed non-essential, she said.

That hasn’t set well with environmentalists. Ted Evgeniadis, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper, said Exelon has been “shirking its responsibility” to help maintain fish populations in the river. He and Betsy Nicholas, executive director of Waterkeepers Chesapeake, contend that the company’s federal license to generate power at Conowingo mandates it to run the lift.

“COVID-19 is not an acceptable excuse to lay off workers who are indeed ‘essential,’” he said, “as these migratory fish must rely on the fish lift at Conowingo Dam … for their survival.”

Mike Parker, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, said officials in his agency were informed of the lift suspension in late March and chose not to fight it.

“I guess in the big picture human safety was given priority over fish passage this season,” he said. “It’s just an unfortunate result of what’s happening in the world right now. It’s a shame, something no one wanted to see happen.”

Wombat has a grand catch up post, Rule 5 Sunday: Sarah Rose McDaniel at The Other McCain.

The Shad Cam!

Is back: http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/fishing/shadcam/

Over the past 35 years, populations of American shad, hickory shad, alewife, blueback herring, striped bass, and other anadromous fish species have steadily declined in Virginia. VDGIF, in collaboration with a number of other partners, has been working to bring back these fish, mostly by restoring access to historic spawning areas throughout coastal Virginia. In the James River, these species were known to spawn as far upstream as Eagle Rock until two sets of dams, in Lynchburg and Richmond, cut off over 400 miles of the river and tributaries. In 1999, a fishway was constructed at Bosher's Dam, providing fish with access to 137 miles of the James River and 168 miles of its tributaries for the first time in nearly 200 years. A camera at the fishway provides visitors a peek into this incredible journey as the fish return to spawn in the spring.

If you're patient, you might see a fish or two go by. I saw a catfish and a shad.

Chesapeake Bay Shad Recovery Uneven

There are two stories in the news today about shad populations in Chesapeake Bay, using the same data, and coming from a different angle. The report from the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program stresses the evidence of recovery as sign that things are getting better:

Shad abundance surpasses restoration goals in Potomac, Rappahannock

Shad abundance has surged in four Chesapeake Bay rivers, surpassing restoration goals in the Potomac and Rappahannock. While shad populations are critically low along the Atlantic coast, scientists hope to see rising trends continue in these two waterways. Shad spend most of their adult lives in the ocean, migrating into freshwater rivers and streams to spawn. Their return brings food to the Bay in the form of protein-rich eggs, adult shad that can be captured during the spawn and a new generation of shad that can offer forage to striped bass, bluefish and other species as they return to the sea.
. . .
Between 2000 and 2014, shad abundance in the Bay increased from 11 percent to 44 percent of the goal. The Potomac River has seen the most consistent rise in returning shad, but the Rappahannock has also seen notable highs. In 2014, abundance in the Potomac and Rappahannock reached 130 and 110 percent of the rivers’ respective targets.

Notice the Susquehanna on that chart. It's not going so well there. This was noticed by B-More Green, the Baltimore Sun environmental blog: Once nearly wiped out, shad stage an uneven comeback in the Chesapeake Bay

Once severely depleted, American shad - the fish that fed the nation's founders - are finally making a comeback in the Chesapeake Bay. Their return so far has been uneven, though.

Spawning runs of the migratory fish have surpassed restoration goals in two of the bay's major tributaries, the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, the Chesapeake Bay Program announced Friday. Shad numbers have shown varying gains in a couple other Virginia rivers, but they remain scarce in the bay's largest tributary, the Susquehanna, as well as in the upper James River.

I know that the fish ladders at Conowingo dam are part of the problem, but it seems to me unlikely that they are the entire issue:

A lift installed in 1997 at Conowingo dam on the lower Susquehanna seemed to be working at first, helping nearly 200,000 spawning shad upriver in 2001. Shad traffic declined after that, though, and hit an all-time low of 10,000 last year. And only eight shad made it all the way past the four dams on the lower Susquehanna.

This year's Susquehanna shad run has only recently begun, so it's hard to tell if it will fare any better than last year's. As of earlier this week, the Conowingo fish lift had helped 4,465 American shad upriver, according to Exelon Corp., the operator of the hydroelectric dam there.

Are we to think that shad got even more stupid between 2001 and 2014.

Shad cam!

Shad!

I let Trevor talk me into going fishing this afternoon.  Fishing wasn't quite as good as the last time I went, and the size tended to be a little smaller, but we did catch over 10 fish a piece

As dusk started to fall, Trevor hooked something that didn't fight like a striper.  Eventually he pulled up this nice, slimy stinky (they really do have a different odor) shad.  I don't know my shad well enough to know if its a Hickory Shad, or an American Shad, but whichever, it was the biggest shad I've seen caught at the infamous "Location X."

We did a couple drifts after the sunset, but it was pretty clear the best of the action was over.

Feds Get Serious on Shad Protection

American Shad from the Potomac River

Shad catch limited in move to restore depleted fishery

If things were this bad in the late 1770s, George Washington’s starving Continental Army might never have made it out of Valley Forge.

The shad, according to one account, came charging up the Schuylkill River to spawn and ran headlong into soldiers who leapt into the water, herded them into nets and wolfed them down.

Catherine Lim with an American shad

Now the shad are depleted to the point of collapse. The population is so low that the federal Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council last week imposed the first-ever cap on the domestic commercial catch of shad and river herring — which Washington’s army also ate during the war against the British.
...
Most states along the Atlantic Coast already enforce moratoriums for shad and herring fishing in their waters, which extend three miles offshore. But beyond that, in federal waters, a fleet of trawlers fishing for mackerel hauls in more than 900 metric tons of shad and herring per year as bycatch.

Sandy Burk and American Shad

In Maryland, both shad and herring are closed fisheries, although the herring fishery was only closed recently (I recall herring being caught for bait in the past few years).  But there is still a very large  harvest occurring out in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the reach of state laws.

The fleet, under the new guidelines imposed by the federal council, will be limited to 236 metric tons of bycatch, far less than the industry proposed but far more than the limit pushed by conservationists.

The cap, which goes into effect next year, is “a really important first,” said Joseph Gordon, manager of U.S. oceans in the northeast for the Pew Charitable Trusts. “River herring and shad used to be the largest fisheries on the coast, forage fish that others eat. Most of their population has declined 90 percent.”

Rather than closing off parts of the ocean to fishing, the federal council gave the industry discretion to figure out how to avoid picking up shad and herring. That’s important to an industry that wants to preserve its mackerel catch, worth $3 million annually overseas.

It will be interesting to see how the mackerel fishing industry handles a mandate to cut shad and herring catches without lowering its catch of the target mackerel. 

An interesting Powerpoint presentation, as a PDF, here.