By Eric Orff

New Hampshire's coastal rivers are dying a slow death by asphyxiation, again. This is a shame since so much progress has been made in recent decades to restore our great rivers.

Fifty years ago, our coastal rivers were no more than open sewers, and fish spawning migrations in them were blocked by dams a century or more old. In many rivers like the Lamprey, Cocheco, Salmon Falls, Oyster, Exeter, Winnicut, and Taylor, river herring, which historically spawned in these rivers in great numbers, were essentially gone.

But over the last three decades, the herring numbers have been restored. Soon, tens of thousands of foot-long, silvery, torpedo-like river herring will be swarming from the depths of the sea into New Hampshire's coastal rivers. Having fought against strong spring river currents to return to their place of birth, female herring will release some 200,000 to 300,000 eggs into the surrounding fresh waters. River herring are filter feeders transforming the nutrients of the sea as adults and of the fresh water as juveniles into flesh and thus are at the bottom of the food chain. Striped bass fishermen follow the huge bass as they, too, move into Great Bay feeding on the multitude of herring.

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