Seven dam challenges for migratory fish: insights from the Penobscot River

Abstract

More than a century of impoundments in the Penobscot River, Maine, USA, has contributed to population declines in migratory fish in the system. A decade of change, research, and monitoring has revealed direct and indirect ways that dams have influenced the river habitat, connectivity for migratory fish, and the food web. The removal of two main-stem dams (in 2012 and 2013) and bolstering of fish passage have been part of coordinated restoration efforts in the watershed. Integral to this undertaking was support for short- and long-term monitoring and research that included physical habitat, fish passage, and broad scale ecological assessments. Herein we discuss the seven interconnected and complex ways that dams have affected the Penobscot River ecosystem, particularly for migratory fish. These include familiar influences ascribed to dams: i) impaired access to habitat, ii) injury and mortality, and iii) delays of migration. Other ecological influences are less studied and more subtle: iv) facilitation of predation, v) community shifts, and vi) demographic shifts. Lastly, dams result in vii) a loss of ecosystem services that would otherwise be intact in an unimpounded system. We draw on both direct examples from the Penobscot River and broader information to characterize how impoundments have transformed this ecosystem for more than a century. Recent dam removals and mitigation efforts have reestablished some of these ecological functions.