Shad only spawn in 100% fresh water. At sea, shad stay far below 300 feet, preferring low light conditions. They seek 100% fresh water well above the estuary salt line, to lay their eggs. Their vulnerable run, up the Hudson to reach fresh water, was when easy takes of thousands of fish made them a part time job that Hudson men would play hookey from their regular work to pursue for a month each spring. During the upstream run, the fish do not feed, so they do not explore shorelines, but concentrate in fast moving schools in the midriver deep, to swim upstream en masse, as quickly as they can get there. On the Hudson… Troy, N.Y. is “there”. At Hudson River mile 153, the Federal Dam effectively cuts off the shad from its ancestral freshwater spawning grounds further upstream.

Once there, they spawn, and the fertilized eggs drift for about 8 days before hatching. These drifting eggs never reach the brackish, salty estuary water, because the Hudson flows both up and downstream depending on tides, taking 126 days for water to completely clear the estuary from north to south. 8 days divided by 126 days gives 0.0635, about 6 percent. Those eggs are only able to drift, in a back and forth motion, about 6 percent of the Hudson’s length between the Troy dam and the sea, or about 10 miles, more or less in the vicinity above Castleton NY, before hatching out as larvae. Growing a bit, the juvenile fry display the genetic preference of shad for large groups and deep water, heading for mid river pools in large schools, to filter plankton.

Please note that none of this behavior brings shad, either adult or juvenile, into the vicinity of Indian Point. Yes, fish are free agents, and can go anywhere in the river, but the deep water parade of the shad run participants avoids the shore in the main, and the eggs remain well north of IPEC. The juveniles are known to avoid the shore, and filter feed in the deepest pools available.

You can research this yourself at http://www.asmfc.org/, the official website of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the main research and enforcement agency, empowered under law to protect the shad and all its variants, the alewife, hickory shad, and others, under the Atlantic Coast Fisheries Cooperative Management Act of 1993. In fact, in their FMR, or fishery management report “Amendment 1”, they say just the same thing. Read their words:

FISHERY MANAGEMENT REPORT OF THE
ATLANTIC STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION
http://www.asmfc.org/

Amendment 1 to the interstate fishery management plan
for shad & river herring page 13, paragraph 2:

“Impacts of power plant impingement upon shad & river herring, expressed as reductions in abundance, were calculated for Hudson River American shad in 1974 and 1975. (Indian Point I, Indian Point II and Indian Point III were all in operation during those years, and had not yet installed protective fish bypass weirs which were to be added after 1981.) The maximum estimated reductions in abundance were 0.04 in 1974 and 0.06 in 1975. These extremely low impingement impacts on American shad is related to the brief period that this species is concentrated in the vicinity of major power plants during their emigration from the estuary in autumn. It was determined that impingement is probably not a biologically important source of mortality except, perhaps, when added to other, more serious stresses (Barnthouse and Van Winkle 1988).”

They then go on to name the largest stressor, and it is in Canada:

“A large tidal hydroelectric project is currently in use at the mouth of the Annapolis river in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. Dadswell et al. (1983) have found that these waters are used extensively by American shad from all runs along the east coast of the United States as foraging areas during summer months. Since these are tidal hydroelectric projects, fish may move into and out our the impacted areas with each tidal cycle. Thus, although these turbines cause a relatively small percentage mortality with one passage, the cumulative mortality resulting from repeated tidal passage into and out of these impacted areas would result in substantial mortalities (Scarratt and Dadswell 1983).”

In 2006, advanced sonar imaging, coupled with previous tagging, allowed scientists to declare definitively, that all shad from the entire east coast of North America , regardless of place of origin, gather in the Bay of Fundy, as their main summer feeding ground. How unfortunate, then that the tide power turbines on the Bay of Fundy have the entire summer to suck up shad twice a day, over & over, every day, all summer. Perhaps Riverkeeper ought to be exerting its influence up in Halifax, where the damage is done, rather than down here, where the deep pockets are.

But the Atlantic States Fishery Commission itself seems to have gotten the jump on Alex & Riverkeeper both timewise, and targetwise, by phasing out the coastal intercept fishery between 2000 and 2005, ending the massive coastal harvesting ( 2 million pounds in 1989) of shad returning south from the Bay of Fundy in the fall. This harvesting is now illegal.

The Delaware and Chesapeake communities seem far advanced over Hudson’s Riverkeeper, having been reduced in 1951, 1952, and 1953 to an absolutely zero shad count, they found that sewage fouling, purely biological pollution, had reduced the dissolved oxygen in their estuaries to negligible levels, heavy coliform bacterial infestations effectively choking returning shad, who suffocated and died by the tens of thousands. Cleaning up the big city sewage outlets from Wilmington, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, they embarked on a multi-pronged effort, which has returned the shad to the Delaware and the Susquehanna. (Few people are aware that many Hudson towns have been grandfathered in, with raw sewage outlets into the Hudson, about which Riverkeeper utters nary a word. More than that, many marginally adequate municipal sewage systems on the Hudson are easily overwhelmed by rain, becoming yet more raw sewage outlets.) The curing of human bio-fouling was step number one in rescuing the shad in Delaware….. why not take a lesson from success?

The mid Atlantic states then built a series of fish ladders, or dam bypasses, allowing fish to pass over obstructing dams, and access their ancestral breeding grounds. Why does Matthiessen appear blissfully ignorant of a problem solved, a mere 300 miles to the south? Why not look 153 miles north, and push for fish ladders at Troy?

Then there is intentional breedstocking. Indian Point itself operated a fish farm at Verplanck for 20 years, contributing substantially to the resurgence of Hudson species that are now on the ascendant. The Delaware and Susquehanna shad rescue effort now includes a yearly take of about 900 roe shad (females), whose roe sacs are carefully fertilized by the milt of a broad array of buck shad in fish hatcheries, before being tagged and released. Each sac can harbor up to 500,000 eggs, producing a quarter of a billion new shad each year, in an effort which seems to not have overtaxed the state agencies paying for it, but which has resulted in 75% of counted shad now being hatchery-bred, while absolute numbers of counted shad climb every year.

Yet here on the Hudson, Matthiessen beats his breast, rehashes old woes solved elsewhere as if newly-found, and tells us to send in donations, so he can urge Entergy to install cooling towers in Peekskill. It only makes sense, if you view both Riverkeeper and Matthiessen, as suffering “End-Of-Mission” malaise, not able to broaden tactics beyond the old “Sue ‘em, and Screw ‘em” attack mentality, and either incompetently, or maliciously suppressing the truth about shadfish, to push yet more quixotic antinuke campaigning down the public’s throat. I guess Mr. Matthiessen figures, its a known maneuver, it worked before, why do anything new or untested now? (Riverkeeper accepted a $12 million grant from Indian Point in 1981…. it seems they’ve grown hopeful of another deep-pocket score). This plan’s downfall is it simply does nothing at all to help the shad.

Meanwhile, in Delaware, and in California, where people were more comprehensive in their vision, shad are on the ascendant. So just who is misleading whom?