Vermont, February 01, 2013. Many areas in this country have icon species that add to their sense of place. The Texas Gulf Coast is busy working to restore the iconic Kemp’s ridley sea turtle and we, for all the hemming and hawing over the salmon restoration program, have the American shad (Alosa sapidissima ) again returning to the Connecticut River in large numbers. The dams in MA built in the late 1700s extirpated shad as well as the salmon from the upper valley. The comeback of the American shad is due in part by the work of the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission to improve water quality and adding fish passage facilities at the dams from Long Island Sound to Wilder, Vermont.
Shad intertwine in the history of our region and country. First Americans caught shad during spring spawning runs and taught colonists how to catch shad to stay alive. The petroglyphs at Bellows Falls, VT are the markers of the tribes that used the falls as a site for capturing large numbers of shad. George Washington was a well known shad angler, personally landing thousands of pounds from the Potomac River. Beyond his personal experiences, as the continental army camped along the Schuylkill River at Valley Forge, dried shad is what stood between the troops and starvation. Atlantic coast farmers took advantage of this seemingly endless supply of fish, using shad as food for themselves and fertilizer for their fields.
American shad are typically 20 to 24 inches in length and as anadromous fish spend most of their lives in saltwater. They range along the Atlantic seaboard and its large river estuaries from Labrador to Florida. As adults, they travel in large schools along coastal areas and may migrate more than 12,000 miles over 4 or 5 years until they are sexually mature when they return to freshwater rivers to spawn.
Each shad river along the Atlantic seaboard has a descrete spawning stock that hones in on their natal river with little slippage between rivers. Shad are broadcast open water spawners. A single female accompanied by several males releases up to 3-600,000 eggs over several sessions that are fertilized by the males. At best, 1% of the fertilized eggs will become adult shad. Southern populations spawn and then almost all die. Northern populations survive spawning; meaning that here in our watershed more than 60% of the shad may live to return to the CT River to spawn several times in their lifetimes. Fish that do survive can live for ten years.
Water temperatures are critical to American shad during their life cycles. They usually spawn at water temperatures between 570 and 690 F. The same report documented the best survival of eggs and larvae to be at temperatures from 60 to 700 F. Temperatures above 750 F cause larval abnormalities. The eggs are transparent, pink to amber and because they are semi-buoyant roll along the river bottom with the current. Depending on temperature, eggs hatch in 6 to 15 days. Newly hatched young remain in fresh water until fall when they move downstream to brackish water where they may remain for a year before moving out to the ocean.
Larval and juvenile American shad are prey for a variety of predators including American eels, bass and striped bass. Once shad enter the ocean, they are food for sharks, blue fish, tuna, and porpoises. Adult shad in rivers have few predators other than human fishers.
Shad are primarily plankton feeders but do eat small shrimp, fish eggs and occasionally small fish. Larvae consume small crustaceans, midge larvae and pupae, caddis fly larvae. In a field test to determine competition among related species, scientists found that in fresh water Chironomid larvae and pupae (a small non biting aquatic insect) made up 53.2% of the diet of shad. When adult American shad are off shore, they feed on plankton, small crustaceans and shrimp.
American shad are native only to the east coast. Introduced into the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento River system in California in the mid 1800s, shad have now spread, through additional stocking or natural migration throughout the Great Lakes, west coast rivers, all the way to Alaska.
Their Latin name sapidissima is variously interpreted to mean delicious, savory, good to eat and most delicious, yet they are such a bony fish that one First American tribe called them a porcupine turned inside out. Two ways to make the fish more palatable is slow-cook fillets by steaming or poaching to dissolve the smaller bones. The most original version of this approach was a fisher friend who cooked his shad in the top rack of his automatic dishwasher set on high dry temperature. The other is “planking.” Boning the shad filet as best you can and nailing the fillet to a plank with strips of salt pork or bacon and stand the plank up, right next to an open fire. Again, the filleting and the slow cooking make the fish enjoyable. The shad roe (egg sacks) are excellent fried or sautéed without any special treatment.
We are making progress toward fully restoring the American shad in the Connecticut River. We do have a ways to go but restoring this iconic fish to its historic range means, we will be well rewarded when successful.
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David L. Deen, River Steward for the Connecticut River Watershed Council. CRC is celebrating 60 years as a protector of the Connecticut River.
