“We Are Settled and Fitted for the Fishing Business”¹
A Pilgrim Era Staple Now Endangered
The 400th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock is approaching, and one unusual focus of the celebration is on a once-populous, now-threatened fish. Herring helped the Pilgrims survive their first year in the New World, but four centuries later the fish themselves are struggling to survive.
“Without Town Brook, and its runs of diadromous fish, Plymouth Colony might not have succeeded,” according to an article on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website.
Much like today’s “Naked and Afraid” contestants, the Pilgrims were concerned with access to potable freshwater. So they settled near what is now called Town Brook in Plymouth, MA, only to discover that the brook was teeming with fish. The herring migrated in early Spring, just as the Pilgrims’ previous year’s food stores were running low and the seeds for new crops were being planted.
According to legend, local Patuxet tribemember Squanto taught the Pilgrims to use dead herring as fertilizer for those crops. The Pilgrims also ate the small fish; they provided a good source of protein and fat.
In his award-winning book “Mayflower,” historian Nathaniel Philbrick details the importance of Town Brook to the Pilgrims:
“Soon after the Mayflower departed for England, the shallow waters of Town Brook became alive with fish. Two species of herring — alewives and bluebacks — returned to the fresh waters where they had been born in order to reproduce.
“Squanto explained that these fish were essential to planting a successful corn crop. Give the poor quality of the land surrounding Plymouth, it was necessary to fertilize the soil with dead herring.”
In a letter written just after the Pilgrims’ first full year in Plymouth, Edward Winslow relayed to George Morton that
“We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and pease, and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings, or rather shads, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well….”¹
Within a century, however, herring’s value had dimmed. The rivers the fish need to travel miles upriver to spawn were dammed to power the Industrial Revolution’s grist and textile mills. Initially, according to Samantha Woods, Executive Director of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, those dams were wood and easily lowered to allow the fish to pass. But in the early 20th century they were replaced with concrete, which prevented the herring from spawning. In the 1970s, fishing trawlers scooped up entire schools of herring in their nets. The population declined accordingly. Currently, populations are at an all-time low.
“There are three thousand dams in Massachusetts alone. Only about two hundred still serve a purpose,” Woods said in an interview.
Herring may have become less crucial to human survival, but they’re still a critical part of the food chain. Osprey, eagles, and other birds of prey eat them, as do large fish such as striped bass and tuna. Woods described them as a “keystone species,” one that feeds multiple other species. In the spring as the fish are spawning, birds are nesting and getting ready to lay eggs; they need the food.
New England coastal trawling restrictions and catch limits instituted in 2018 will help the herring survive in the ocean. On land, conservationists have led a movement to remove dams wherever possible to enable the natural river flow. In some cases fish ladders were constructed alongside the dams, to assist the herring upstream and over the dam. Many of these have become damaged over the decades and are being restored by volunteers.
The Town of Plymouth has been restoring the herring run at Town Brook, which was dammed centuries ago to power the Jenney Grist Mill. Once stoppered by six dams, Town Brook is now only blocked by one. Their goal is to have the herring run fully clear in time for the 400th anniversary in 2020.
“The Town of Plymouth has done wonderful work to restore Town Brook…that’s where the herring will migrate,” Woods said.
The Art Complex Museum in neighboring Duxbury (originally part of Plymouth and the eventual home of Myles Standish, John Alden and William Brewster) is creating a mosaic mural dedicated to the herring, with the intent that it be complete in time for the 400th. The land the Museum sits on was originally owned by John Alden.
“We created this mosaic with the idea that it’s a nature-based theme. It’s a herring run…Herring is something that’s really important and was really important at the time of the early settlers,” Sally Dean Mello of the Art Complex Museum explained in an interview.
The mosaic will be placed outside, on a wall that slopes uphill to echo the herring’s upstream migration. Mello expects the installation to be complete and installed by September 2020.
Local ecologists appreciate the attention being brought to the herring, which are nearly an endangered species at this point. Even with the clearing of the runs and fish ladders, it will take years for the herring population to rebound.
“Humans react when things become a problem. We really need people to care about this,” Woods said.
¹ Letter from Edward Winslow to George Morton, December 11, 1621.
