Thanks to Dam Demolition, American Shad Spawning in Brandywine Creek Once Again

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Image via Jim Shanahan, Brandywine Shad 2020.

Thanks to dam removals, American shad are once again spawning in the Brandywine Creek for the first time in more than a century, writes Hannah Chinn for WHYY.

The silvery, lightly spotted fish was once an abundant food source in the Delaware Valley. However, overfishing, pollution, and dams have taken a toll on the species.

The situation began to improve with governmental catch restrictions and waterway regulations that are gradually restoring the American shad’s natural migration patterns.

The remaining impediments, a series of dams, are also slowly being removed.

“It’s really more than the shad,” said Jim Shanahan, who co-founded an environmental conservation organization called Brandywine Shad 2020. “When you open up these rivers and return them to a free-flowing state, it changes the whole ecology of that quarter.”

For example, natural predators such as ospreys and bass feed on the shad. Meanwhile, mussels – which are known to reduce pollution – attach their eggs to the gills of the shad which then travel up the river.

In Pennsylvania, 290 dams have been removed over the last two decades, thus helping to restore natural river flow, ecological function, and fish passages.

Read more about the Brandywine Creek at WHYY here.

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