Help Fish Spawn in Greenwich

The number of fish that swim upstream to spawn in Long Island Sound's watershed is ridiculously low. Every stream -- literally -- used to have a spring run, but dams have blocked them off. To compensate (we're always trying to compensate for our environmental mistakes; we never seem to recognize them ahead of time and avoid them), a number of towns have worked with the Connecticut DEP to build fish ladders and passageways.

One of the best and most active is on the Mianus River, in Greenwich. If I lived near closer, I'd volunteer to do this.

Spawning Help in North Branford and Success in Greenwich

Who knows why the number of spawning alewives and blueback herring in local rivers and streams has fallen so low? One theory is that striped bass restoration efforts have been so successful that the big fish (the stripers) are eating the little fish (the herring). Throughout Connecticut, the two most popular solutions are to remove dams or build fish ladders, to ease the upstream passage. And apparently it's working, at least in some locations:

This spring, in Greenwich, the Mianus River passageway saw a 12-fold increase in river herring — about 90,000 fish. News of the record migration spread rapidly along the shoreline.

Kim Martineau of the Hartford Courant dropped that nugget into the bottom of an interesting story (here) about a family in North Branford that, with state and Trust for Public Land help, is building a fish ladder on the part of the Farm River that passes through their property.