Robert Morris and Jeff Falla Visit
Submitted by Drew Minery and Karizma Chickering
Rober Morris and Jeff Falla (Photo credit A. England)
On Thursday, March 31st, Mr. Jeff Falla and Mr. Robert Morris came into the eighth grade class to talk to us about their memories of alewives. They gave their opinions on why they think the alewives aren’t running up into our marsh any more.
When Robert and Jeff were younger, they would catch the alewives for fun with a colander and then they would flip them over the beaver dam into the marsh to help them get there. They mentioned that there was never a big run, but a couple lobstermen from Wheeler Bay did come to catch some alewives for lobster bait when the fish ran in the spring.
Robert and Jeff remembered how the sewage from houses had run from the backyards of those houses and down into the marsh. After swimming in the creek they would come out with red blotches all over their body. When the house that used to be on the granite piling over the stream flushed the toilet, it would go right into the creek. Back then, there were bottom feeding fish, like flounder, that would come all the way up the creek as far as the culvert. They explained that they believed the fish would feed off the solid waste. They used to see mackerel in the creek too. When the water quality improved, the flounder and mackerel seemed to disappear. The water is a lot cleaner today. Now, the only thing that runs into the marsh from houses is gray water. When we were working in the stream we saw water coming out of a pipe several times.
Robert Morris believes that one of the reasons that the alewives aren’t here today is because there are now pickerel in the marsh. From 2009-2013 the DMR put 500 alewives in the marsh. Pickerel are predators of alewives and could have eaten the fish that were stocked, or their babies. Another reason he thinks the alewives didn’t survive is because there may not be enough oxygen in the water. Robert says he asked the state biologists when they were at the marsh, if the state ever tested the water quality. To everyone’s knowledge, no water quality tests were ever done. Within days of being stocked, Robert noticed the alewives were either dead or had left. When the young alewives left the marsh to go into the ocean to grow to adulthood they never came back. No one knows exactly why.
Robert told us that in order to maintain the alewives we may have to get rid of the pickerel. He also said that the water quality in the marsh may be a big problem. They both said at the end of their visit that if we could get a run of 25 bushel a year down there that would be really cool. There are about 120 fish in a bushel, so that would be a run of around 3,000 fish. It will be a lot of work and not an easy job but we can do it.