THE PENOBSCOT UNDAMMED Can We Restore the River to Its Natural
State and Bring Back the Fish? Alewife population is down by
70%, eels access less than 20% of their historic habitats, and
American salmon and shortnose sturgeon are on the endangered
list. What if 10,000 salmon migrated upriver each year instead
of a few thousand seen today? Or if shad increased by a million
or more? This could be a possibility when two dams along the
Penobscot River are taken down beginning this year. On Thursday,
January 26, Dr. Steve Coghlan, Assistant Professor of Freshwater
Fisheries Ecology at the University of Maine’s Department of
Wildlife Ecology, is the featured speaker at the 2012 Ocean
Environment Lecture Series: Rachel Carson Lectures, hosted by
the Marine Environmental Research Institute (MERI) in Blue Hill.
Coghlan’s lecture, The Penobscot Undammed: Restoring the River,
begins at 7 p.m., preceded by a reception at 6 p.m. All lectures
in the series are free and open to the public. MERI’s 2012
lectures celebrate the