Dr. Anna Vinton, UMPI Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Sustainability, has received a $5,000 Maine Sea Grant to collaborate with state and nonprofit partners in developing a new qualitative tool that will help identify the best combinations of salmon populations for restocking the Kennebec River. The computer model has the potential to help restore the Kennebec’s population of Atlantic salmon as nearby hydroelectric dams, which have impeded salmon crossings for decades, are removed and researchers look toward restocking the river.
Administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Sea Grant College Program serves as a powerful resource for sharing marine science information, solving problems, and supporting the well-being of people and ecosystems. Maine Sea Grant, based on the University of Maine campus in Orono, is one of 34 NOAA Sea Grant programs throughout the coastal and Great Lakes states.
Atlantic salmon are born in rivers, migrate to ocean waters to feed and grow for one to three years, and then return to freshwater to reproduce, Dr. Vinton said. Before the existence of hydroelectric dams on the Kennebec, Atlantic salmon would migrate there from the Gulf of Maine by the tens to hundreds of thousands, returning to their usual spawning grounds.
Because more than 90 percent of the state of Maine’s rivers and streams have dams that impede salmon pathways, Atlantic salmon are now a protected species in Maine. Only 75 of Maine’s 400 dams have fishways, structures that allow fish to swim around dams as they travel through a river or stream, according to NOAA Fisheries. Four hydroelectric dams on the lower Kennebec River are slated for removal within the next seven to 10 years, which will ideally create free-flowing rivers and higher survival chances for Atlantic salmon returning to spawning grounds upstream.
Dr. Vinton and her co-principal investigators, Dr. Danielle Frechette with the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and Dr. Valérie Ouellet with the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF), plan to create a computer model that will take existing genetic data about the various Atlantic salmon populations in Maine’s rivers and evaluate which combinations of salmon populations would produce the healthiest offspring. The team also plans to engage additional researchers and managers working in the field as the project develops.
“We’re building a tool that we hope will help managers narrow down potential crossing strategies as they plan for the Kennebec restoration,” Dr. Vinton said. “It’s a starting point, and we’ll be working closely with our partners at Maine DMR and ASF to make sure it reflects the best available science.”
The Maine Sea Grant will support a one-year research pilot project, during which Vinton, two UMPI undergraduate students, and partners with ASF and the Maine DMR will develop their computer model based on the most current data from federal programs that monitor Maine’s Atlantic salmon. The model will include data on genetic diversity, the number of individual breeding salmon, and how related the fish in the river populations are to each other.
“There are excellent monitoring programs that track the genetics of each river’s [Atlantic salmon] population, and this project builds on that work by creating a framework to compare crossing strategies,” Dr. Vinton said. This fall, Dr. Vinton’s UMPI students will work with Dave Putnam, retired UMPI faculty member and manager of the Dug Brook Hatchery in Ashland, to gain real-world hatchery research experience that will inform their data entry on Atlantic salmon. Dr. Vinton plans to also take students from her Marine and Freshwater Ecology class to Dug Brook Hatchery for independent projects this fall, hoping to inspire the next generation of freshwater researchers.