Currents: science and conservation
Shad: A ritual of spring
Tony Brown
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service
The American shad has played an important part in American fisheries since Colonial times, and commercial exploitation has taken a toll on its population. The image above shows one early technique, setting gill nets by lantern-light at night. The photograph below shows fishermen hauling in a shad seine in the Potomac River in Virginia.
Father to teenage daughter: “Why don’t you come shad fishing with me this year?”
Daughter to father: “You mean spend a long weekend sitting on a cold river just to catch a bony, pregnant fish and then turn it loose?”
Father: “Uh … I wouldn’t describe it that way. But it’ll be fun.”
Daughter declines.
Perhaps a better sales pitch by dad would have swayed the daughter and their shad trip would have become an annual father-daughter tradition.
Or perhaps not.
The finny focus of their brief discussion was the American shad, or white shad as it is sometimes called along its coastal range from Canada to Florida. The fish has been an important commercial fishery since Colonial times, but numbers have fallen steadily in the past century. The commercial catch today is but a fraction of its heyday. A century ago, the annual catch of shad in the Chesapeake Bay alone was put at 17 million pounds. The decline is blamed on the usual villains — overfishing and water pollution — as well as the building of small dams up and down the Atlantic Coast that blocked the shad from their old upriver spawning grounds.
Gill nets have always been the fishing implement of choice, with commercial fishermen hauling in huge catches of the fish. Shad fishing by anglers with rod and reel didn’t become popular until after World War II, but has grown steadily ever since. A shad’s dashing, sometimes airborne, fight makes it fun to catch, earning the fish a dedicated following. This has helped fuel conservation efforts aimed at braking the fish’s decline.
Some states have even banned in-river and coastal commercial shad fishing. Other states have toughened restrictions. Rivers are getting cleaned up and small dams are being removed or breached to allow fish to return to ancestral spawning grounds. More spawning grounds mean more fish. More fish means more shad to catch.
Gulf of Maine Cod Project, NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries; Courtesy of National Archives
The fish of two worlds
American shad are anadromous, meaning they are born in rivers, make their way to the salty sea, then return to the river of their birth to reproduce. According to David Wilkins, freshwater aquarist at South Carolina Aquarium, spawning begins here in February and runs through May, when water temperatures are between 51 and 71 degrees.
Being fruitful
When spawning, a female shad releases about 200,000 to 600,000 eggs into the water, where they are fertilized by several males waiting around like guys in a bar at closing time. Not much of a courtship here, just a “git-er-done” approach. The eggs hatch as they slowly drift downriver with the current. The hatchlings hang around in inland waters for their first summer, dining on plankton-sized creatures. Then, as the water cools, they head for the sea.
They call me the wanderer
Shad spend most of their lives at sea, traveling about in huge schools for two to four years. They may cover 12,000 miles before returning to their birth river to start the cycle all over again.
Heavy casualties
The bounty of nature also creates a killing field of startling efficiency. Seventy percent of the young shad will fall victim to predation and other threats before they reach the sea. Along the northern Atlantic Coast, some females will live long enough to be repeat spawners. A female shad can live 10 years and reach 30 inches in length, but the odds are stacked against her. Wilkins, of the South Carolina Aquarium, notes that shad populations south of Cape Hatteras tend to spawn once and die.
Catch me if you can
Shad do not feed when they return to spawn. Near as anyone can figure, they hit fishermen’s small artificial lures purely out of reflex.
Location, location, location
Shad in the Lowcountry have recovered somewhat in recent years, but populations in the Edisto, Ashepoo and Combahee rivers have declined some. One of the best spots to engage a shad in “airs above the water” is just below the dam on the Tailrace Canal.
Roe, roe, roe in your boat
Shad’s 769 bones, along with its high oil content and strong taste, have kept it off modern menus for the most part. The shad’s eggs, or roe, are the best known shad dish. The eggs can be pan-fried or broiled and are considered a delicacy … by some.
Sources: www.dnr.sc.gov ACE Basin Species Gallery, www.chesapeakebay.net www.americanrivers.org, S.C. Department of Agriculture
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