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A Natural and Cultural History of Shad
The huge numbers and excellent flavor of the American shad were once legendary along the East Coast of the United States. From long before the arrival of settlers to the New World, the spring migratory runs of this 20-30" full-flavored silver fish once numbered in the tens of millions, featuring so many fish that the rivers were described as "black" and "boiling." Their range included accessible eastern streams lying between Newfoundland, Canada and northern Florida. The Latin name for the species is Alosa sapidissima, meaning "most delicious, or savory, herring." Glowing historical accounts reach back to the earliest colonial days, where the "innumerable" fish, both fresh and preserved through pickling or salting, was a central part of settlers' diets, as it was for Native Americans before them.[1]
Today, many people have never heard of the fish. Once denied access to its former spawning streams through dam blockages and pollution, the fish's numbers plummeted. At the same time, they were over-harvested in the ocean. Now, through a national restoration effort, this important symbol of our natural and cultural heritage is making a comeback.
The American shad is the largest North American member of the herring family, commonly reaching about 30" and 4-8 pounds. It is an anadromous fish that spends the majority of its adult life at sea, returning only to freshwater in the spring to spawn. Like salmon, shad return to the stream of their birth, their "natal" stream, to spawn.
Beginning in March or April, shad congregate in the bays, sounds, and estuaries below their natal rivers, adjusting their physiology from salt- to fresh water. Then, about the same time as the shadbush (Amelanchier spp.) blooms, they stop eating and move en masse upstream, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles before spawning (for example, into upstate New York on both the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers). Not all shad die after spawning, instead returning downstream to the ocean where the cycle may begin again.
During the migratory runs, the males travel upriver in schools ahead of the females. Shad spawn over sandbars or rocky riffles at night. Females, which are larger than the males, produce 100,000 eggs on average, with 300,000 a documented high. Shad eggs are not adhesive and are just slightly heavier than water, so they do not readily sink. Instead, they drift along with the current, settling to the bottom as they gain weight and lodge in place. The eggs develop and hatch in eight to twelve days, depending on water temperature. The young shad or fry feed on freshwater plankton and aquatic insects throughout the summer. When the fall rains arrive and the water cools, surviving young descend their birth streams in large numbers, eventually heading out into the open ocean. East Coast shad then form large schools, wintering more or less together off the mid-Atlantic. Over the summer months, they range as far north as the Bay of Fundy, off Nova Scotia. They feed exclusively on oceanic plankton. After three-to-five years at sea, the natural phenomenon cycles around again, and those shad ready to spawn congregate in the bays, sounds, and estuaries below their natal rivers.
Such an abundant and tasty fish naturally caught the attention of settlers. For example, early Swedish settlers in Wilmington, Delaware, are reported to have brought their fish planks with them among other household effects.[2] The planking of fish was and is a favorite method of cooking shad, used by Native Americans as well as settlers. Traditionally, the fish is nailed or attached to a previously warmed oak plank and baked by placing the plank close to the coals of a fire. An engineer with the Swedish colony, Peter Lindestrom, wrote in his Geographica Americae (1654-56), "shad is a very fine flavored and excellent tasting fish."[3]
Shad continued to be as important to the colonists as they were to the Native Americans. Using fishing skills such as brush nets and rock-crib traps learned from the Indians, the early settlers salted the fish away for the rest of the year. When Connecticut settlers laid claim to the northern tier of Pennsylvania in the 1750s, they quickly tried to establish commercial fishing rights to the shad runs in the Susquehanna, which was only resolved by war. Meanwhile, the settlers introduced the use of nets and seines for large-scale harvesting.[4] Overall, fishing or trading for shad was so widespread in colonial America, it is said that "no family was without its share."[5] Settlements and areas on rivers were named after shad, such as Shad Landing, Maryland, and Shadwell, Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson was born. Shad even had a role to play in the American Revolution: they have been credited with helping to save General Washington's troops at Valley Forge. The spring run of 1778 arrived in time to feed and strengthen the starving troops.[6] Shad have even been named "the Founding Fish" by author John McPhee, due to their central role in early American life.[7]
The importance of shad continued in the early decades of the new American Republic. It is reported, for example, that the annual harvest of shad in the upper Susquehanna River was limited only by the availability of salt needed for their preservation.[8] Yet during this time, the increasing blockage of spawning rivers by dams and other impediments, combined with degradation of water quality by new industries and relative overfishing, initiated a downward spiral in shad populations. Still, a commercial shad industry was able to establish and maintain itself, especially in larger rivers, until the early 20th century. In fact, American shad were the largest commercial fishery in the mid-Atlantic. "Just as the sacred cod of Massachusetts is the accepted emblem of the Bay State, so the shad may rightly be considered the piscatorial representative of the states bordering the Chesapeake," wrote Rachel Carson in the Baltimore Sun in 1936. Shad is the state fish of Connecticut today.
Still, shad are naturally most abundant in the middle Atlantic region. In fact, the Delaware River and its tributaries are considered to have historically supported the largest population of American shad over all East Coast rivers.[9] Consequently, the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers were among the most abundant commercial fisheries, supporting fish hauls of over 6 million and 10 million pounds respectively in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The well-known Philadelphia painter, Thomas Eakins, depicted shad fishermen at work in his Shad fishing at Gloucester on the Delaware River (1881). Today, these fisheries are a tiny fraction of what they were due to habitat loss and fishing pressure. There are no commercial shad fisheries left on the Susquehanna and only one on the Delaware River at Lambertville, New Jersey. Even today, though shad numbers are far below their 1900 levels, shad and its roe are the most popular springtime fishery on the Delaware River and are marketed commercially, with the annual harvest ranging from $30,000 to $150,000 dockside value between 1980 and 1989.
[1] Weslanger, C. A., 1953. Red Man on the Brandywine, Wilmington, DE., Chapter 13, page 1.
[2] From Ellwanger, G.H., 1902. The Pleasures of the Table. Doubleday, Page, & Co., New York, p. 255, as reported in Raasch, 1991, p. 12.
[3] Also as reported in Raasch, 1991, p. 13.
[4] From U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, et al, undated, "Migratory Fish restoration and Passage on the Susquehanna River," p. 1.
[5] Ibid, p. 1.
[6] "The most memorable day was the one early in spring when schools of shad came swimming up the Schuylkill --- thousands upon thousands of beautiful, fat shining shad. The whole camp turned out to catch shad. The river so swarmed with fish that each haul of the net brought in hundreds. That night for the first time since the army had moved to Valley Forge there was not a hungry man in camp; each solider went to bed with a belly stuffed with shad." (p. 179 of a chapter called "The Revolution" in "The Pennsylvania Dutch" by Frederic Klees, published 1951 by Macmillan Co.)
[7] See McPhee, 2002, The Founding Fish.
[8] From U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, et al, undated, "Migratory Fish restoration and Passage on the Susquehanna River," p. 1.
[9] From U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, et al, undated, "American Shad Restoration in the Delaware River Basin," fact sheet.
For more information send email to emc@brandywine.org, call 610-388-2700, or write to Environmental Management Center, Brandywine Conservancy, P.O. Box 141, Chadds Ford, PA 19317
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