SEEKING SALMON SOLUTIONS

Monitoring wild Atlantic salmon returns in Maine is like riding a roller coaster. This year, the number of fish coming back is up dramatically (the Penobscot River is having the best run in five years), but the numbers are lower than two years ago. But the actual numbers of fish returning to most rivers remains pitifully low. Two fish returned to the Pleasant River and 15 to the Narraguagus River in Washington County. That’s a vast improvement over last year’s numbers: zero for the Pleasant and seven for the Narraguagus, but well below 2001 when 11 came back to the Pleasant and 32 to the Narraguagus. Maine’s Atlantic salmon remain in trouble and it is clear that more needs to be known about the fish to determine why the rates of return varies so much.

Biologists admit they don’t have all the answers, which is troubling to landowners and some industries that bristled at the new regulations that came with the 2000 endangered species listing for Atlantic salmon in eight Maine rivers, five of them in Washington County. If they don’t know why salmon numbers are down (or, as is now the case, up) why restrict the people of Maine with new rules to protect the fish?

Fisheries biologists now say acid rain, long a problem in Maine, may play a larger role in salmon health than first thought. Perhaps it is conditions in the ocean, where thousands of young fish are known to die after leaving Maine’s rivers in the spring, that are to blame, they say. Another group of scientists believes there might not be enough calcium in the water, so they plan to ask for permission to add some to the river water.

Such trial and error would be less a problem without the specter of federal penalties for those in Maine who, inadvertently or not, kill a salmon by polluting a stream or not fixing a fish passageway. Much progress has been made to make Maine’s rivers and bays more hospitable to salmon. Blueberry farmers changed their practices to take less water from the Down East rivers to irrigate their crops. Salmon farmers are strengthening their cages to prevent escapees (the number of aquaculture fish found in the rivers this year is down dramatically) and, under court order, will soon mark their fish and stop using salmon with European, rather than North American genes. Perhaps these changes made a difference.

Thousands of acres of land near prime salmon habitat has been preserved at a cost of millions of federal and state dollars. Just this week, it was announced that The Nature Conservancy has the option to buy 10,000 acres along the Narraguagus and Spring rivers near Cherryfield in 2005. Perhaps protecting all this land made a difference.

But no one knows. Without more definitive information about why the return number vary so much from year to year, Mainers can be forgiven for their skepticism. Much more study is needed before we know what is working and what is not.