By Dorcas Miller
Maine Master Naturalist
GARDINER — Literally tens of thousands of alewives are churchng at the base of the paron at Gardiner Paperboard Dam, the first dam on Cobbossee Stream, trying to get upstream to spawn.
Upstream Cobbossee is grateful for the citizen science work that junior at Gardiner High School have done since the project began three years ago.
By sampling hundreds of alewives deach spring, researchers are getting a better idea of what fish passage restoration could mean. This spring, with school physicallly closed, Upstream board members and activist suited up, put on face masks and set up shop on the rock pile immediately downstream of the dam to try to fill in for the student-scientists of Gardiner Area High School.
At the water’s edge, Greg Ponte nets an alewife and plops it into a water bucket, which he hands over to Johnnie Beane who hands it up to Steve Brooke, who sets it down near John Graham. John grabs an alewife that moments ago has been flipping and turning in a stiff current — and continues to turn and flip to escape the clutch of a perceived predator.
After hearing about the citizen science at the stream, my husband jokingly described an imagined fishy conversation after being caught in the nets: “I was abducted by aliens! They measured and probed and took some of my scales!”
“Right, Archie. Aliens. Why don’t you go take a rest. You’ve had a long, tiring migration.”
John measures the fish and Sharon Gallant takes over, weighing a flopping streak of silver in a box on a scale, back to John, who milks the underside: Pink exudate means female, white means male. (60 percent are males.) Back to Steve, who takes sample scales on every seventh fish.
Later, someone at Maine’s Department of Marine Resources counts the growth increments on the scales to find out each little fish’s age.
Back to Johnnie who returns the alewife to the stream even as Greg is ready with another fish to send up the bucket chain. In less than an hour, the team collects information on 50 fish.
One week completed, five more to go. In six weeks, Sharon, project director and science teacher (and awesome coach) at Gardiner Area High School, will send a report and the fish scales to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
PHOTO: Fifty fish caught, weighed, measured sexed, scaled, released on Cobbossee Stream with six-foot physical distance. (Upstream Cobbossee Facebook photo)
