What's New - Salem Sound Coastwatch

HERE COME THE SMELT!
For the ninth year in a row, the Manchester DPW, in cooperation with the Division of Marine Fisheries Station in Gloucester, and the Manchester Coastal Stream Team of Salem Sound Coastwatch, will facilitate smelt spawning season . The major stream draining much of Manchester’s land area is Sawmill Brook, along with its tributaries Cat Brook and Causeway Brook. In the lower reaches of Sawmill Brook, near the School Street crossing, there are excellent conditions for these small fish to deposit their eggs. They need a clean, rocky streambed, flowing fresh water, and a way to get there from the ocean. Normally the tide gates at Manchester Harbor create a dam and prevent fish from moving upstream at any but the very highest tides, when water can flow over the gates. Between mid-March and mid-May, in the middle of the night over several weeks, smelt and other anadromous fish feel the urge to move into fresh water to spawn. To make sure that this is possible, the DPW opens the tide gates several times each week in the springtime. This means that the “channel” behind the fire station will occasionally appear completely empty. Thanks from the members of the Manchester Coastal Stream Team to Bob Moroney and his great crew! from the Manchester Cricket March 31, 2006

North River Cleanup

The Salem News Online Edition
Thursday, May 22, 2003

Debris cleared from smelt's path

Rob Gough of Salem Sound Coastwatch cleans debris from the North River in Salem near the Peabody line.
By TOM DALTON Staff Writer

SALEM -- As a swan paddled nearby, two men in hip-boots hooked a chain to a large truck tire and watched as a crane hoisted it from the shallow, murky waters of the North River.

The crane operator swung the tire over a tidal gate and dropped it into the back of a yellow pickup truck, where it was reunited with an old bike, metal pipes and a rusty car door.

At low tide yesterday morning, a crew from Salem Harbor Station used a 30-ton crane to clear decades of debris from a narrow opening of the North River by the North Street overpass.

Although the work was done with little fanfare, it is an important step, an official said, in the reclamation of a river that was poisoned by years of industrial waste and abused by generations who used stretches of it as a liquid landfill.

"It's definitely baby steps and little victories along the way," said Rob Gough, director of Salem Sound Coastwatch, formerly Salem Sound 2000.

Salem Sound Coastwatch, which is spearheading efforts to bring the river back, portrayed yesterday's junk haul as a victory for many, from the city planners who want to redevelop the former industrial corridor along the river to the tiny rainbow smelts who are slowly returning each spring to spawn.

"The stuff that is being pulled out here are impediments to the progress of migratory smelts," Gough said, standing not far from a discarded refrigerator along the riverbank.

Until two years ago, there were no signs of smelts in the river, which once teemed with a fish considered a good barometer of the health of a river. Smelts are recreational fish to some and also an important element in the food chain. They are eaten by striped bass, bluefish and other larger fish.

After a state marine biologist discovered eggs upstream near the Peabody line in 2001, officials began monitoring the smelt migration. Last year, Salem Sound Coastwatch, Salem Harbor Station and a large group of volunteers laid rocks in a river bed along Harmony Grove Road in an effort to improve the spawning grounds. Only a handful of eggs were found last year, but more were discovered this year during a mid-April count.

"They found 39 eggs," said Gough. "It isn't great numbers given the level of effort, but the good news is smelt are making their way up to that spawning area and laying eggs."

As part of North River Awareness Week, groups cleaned the banks along the smelting area, picked up trash from Furlong Park on Franklin Street, and held a festival in Leslie's Retreat Park.