TOPSHAM — The Cathance River Education Alliance will present “Our Disappearing Rainbow Smelt” Tuesday night at Topsham Public Library.
The talk will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the library located at 25 Foreside Road.
The rainbow smelt is a small fish that lives in estuaries and offshore waters and spawns in shallow freshwater streams each spring. A century ago, streams teemed with these silvery fish. During the last 20 years, numbers have dropped dramatically, and the rainbow smelt is now listed as a federal “Species of Concern”.
Claire Enterline, a smelt expert with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, will be on hand to discuss this current topic.
The announcement attributes the website “Rainbow Smelt: An Imperiled Fish in a Changing World” — found at http://restorerainbowsmelt.c om — for noting that “Rainbow smelt were so plentiful a hundred years ago that farmers caught them by the barrelful and had enough to eat, use as bait, and even spread on their fields as fertilizer. In many places now, it would be difficult to fill a single barrel with rainbow smelt.”
To find out more about CREA, visit creamaine.org or call 331-3202.
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