Herring Hearsay

In light of all the new data, one might suppose that the guides would be resting easy. But no. When I asked Keliher if he’d gotten through to any of them, he replied: “I reached out to the Grand Lake Stream Guides Association when we found out about this new bill. And they said, ‘We don’t want to meet with you.’ I’ve had several of them call since then to complain that the state is supporting alewife reestablishment. But it’s been a one-sided conversation.”

Speaking through their parent outfit, the Maine Professional Guides Association, the Grand Lake Stream guides charge that LD 1957 is the work of “growing numbers of environmental extremists,” that partial recovery of a native fish in its alien-polluted habitat would be an “ecological disaster” and that the bill “jeopardizes the livelihoods of Maine’s famous Grand Lake Guides.”

According to the guides, the alewives will choke storied Grand Lake Stream, leaving no room for landlocked salmon—this despite the fact that when alewives had access to the two fishways and there were 2.5 million of them in the system, none were seen in Grand Lake Stream because none had spawned in the lake that feeds it. That lake, West Grand, had been blocked to alewife migration; and it will continue to be blocked even if LD 1957 becomes law.

Further, the guides warn that anadromous alewives are Typhoid Marys, sure to blight the system with viral erythrocytic necrosis and infectious salmon anemia. But Keliher reports that there’s no evidence of anadromous alewives infecting any fish with any disease anywhere in Maine. “If this were a real threat,” he says, “we’d have to shut down alewife restoration throughout the entire state.”

Finally, according the guides’ February 8, 2008 Urgent Alert, “Regional IF&W fishery biologists who oppose the bill because of the potential impact of alewives on inland species will not be allowed to testify.” This is an untruth.

First, regional fisheries biologists do not oppose the bill. Second, they wouldn’t be allowed to testify on any such legislation, even if they wanted to, and they don’t. The agency position is traditionally provided by a single spokesman, and in this case the lead agency (the only one that gets to testify) is the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Albion Goodwin, who left the Maine House of Representatives in 2004, still speaks for the guides in his capacity as a member of IF&W’s Advisory Council. He vows he’s going to kill the bill, which he describes as “asinine and ridiculous” and brags that he’s given the Department of Marine Resources such “hell” that it’s sure to withdraw its support. He doesn’t believe anything in the study. In fact, he hasn’t read it. “Why wouldja even think the alewives should be in the St. Croix?” he demands.

The landlocked alewives that first showed up in East Grand Lake, he avers, derive from anadromous fish “brought up from the river in buckets.” When I informed him that the researchers had determined, through DNA analysis, that this is not so, he said: “Forget it. They’re lying.”

Then, after recycling all the guide-generated superstitions about smallmouth bass and alewives, Goodwin launched into a harangue about the lack of fish in the St. Croix and its estuary. “The entire river’s depleted; they’re ain’t no fish. In the last 15 years I’ve caught no haddock and no cod.”

“Do you think this might have something to do with the lack of forage fish?” I asked.