Alewives Abound at Benton Falls

NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL OF MAINE • June 7, 2024

At the end of May we were lucky enough to join our colleagues on a field trip to the Benton Falls Dam on the Sebasticook River to see the alewife (river herring) run. Alewives spend the majority of their lives in the ocean and only follow freshwater routes to spawn in interior lakes and ponds in the spring. The massive alewife run in the Sebasticook, a tributary of the Kennebec River, is the result of decades of dedicated work by the staff at Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) who came before us and made an impact in the real world.