Friends of Merrymeeting Bay’s seventh presentation of their 25th annual Winter Speaker Series, American Shad, features Nate Gray, fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, on Wednesday, April 13, at 7 p.m.
Nate Gray
American Shad are fish requiring connectivity between marine and freshwater habitats to complete their lifecycle, according to the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, and are highly sought after as a sportfish because of their feisty nature and their ability to leap. Almost every major river along the Atlantic seaboard historically supported a spawning population of American shad but their numbers continue to drop.
Dams threaten the species by cutting off their migratory routes, according to the Friends, and the fish are hesitant to use fishway structures to bypass dams.
Gray is the project leader for the Kennebec Hydropower Developers Group program of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Bureau of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat. He is also on the Board of Friends of Merrymeeting Bay. He has worked on the Kennebec River and its tributaries since 1992 and been involved in virtually all aspects of the restoration program.
He witnessed the removal of Edwards Dam in Augusta in 1999 and has seen the populations of river herring (alewives and blueback herring) rise from a hundred thousand to over three million with the installation of multiple fish passages and the opening of thousands of acres of historical habitat in the Kennebec drainage. He has worked extensively on American shad restoration in the Kennebec River and was actively involved in the Waldoboro Shad Hatchery from 1992-2007.
Winter Speaker Series presentations are held via Zoom and are accessible via fomb.org.
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