May 7 More fish…..

For the past three mornings, a school of alewives has come in and the fish have begun working their way up the fish ladder. Enough fish have made it through the 69 pools that make up the fish ladder for counting to begin. Counting is done for 10 minutes of every hour between 6am and 8pm. In the beginning, about 1,000 – 1500 alewives are counted in a day (a sample that represents 6,000 – 9,000 fish into the lake to spawn). By the time the run gets going in earnest, there are days when 10,000 or more fish are counted passing into Damariscotta Lake each day (extrapolated to 60,000 fish or more). So, you can see, it’s takes a while for 1 million alewives to pass into Damariscotta Lake to spawn. We’ll be counting them…..one by one….for 10 minutes each hour.