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striped bass or groundfish. They are highly valued as bait for many recre- ational and commercial fisheries, such as striped bass and lobster.


Recent studies have indicated that during the ocean portion of their life cycle, anadromous species in the past may have been very important to sur- vival of inshore groundfish stocks. These studies have linked declines in nearshore groundfish stocks to more


TIDE


recent declining river herring popula- tions. It is suspected that during the spring spawning migration, the very large anadromous biomass would have been available to the inshore ground- fish populations. This would have meant survival after a long lean winter. The word “past” is the key to that last statement, as diadromous fish populations were severely impacted once dams started fragmenting


Photo by Kevin Lucey, NHDES, Restoration Coordinator


spawning habitat. In 1896, New Hampshire had 293,671 pounds of river herring commercially harvested, compared to 9,439 pounds in 2009. Since N.H. started monitoring river herring at fish ladders, built roughly between the late 1960s to mid-1970s, there has been a steady decline in the returning river herring population, from a high in 1976 of about 475,000, to 96,000 in 2009.


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