AUGUSTA (AP) – The lowly river herring, or alewife, was the focus of spirited testimony before a legislative panel that took up a plan to reintroduce the once plentiful forage fish into the St. Croix River watershed.

Backing the plan were biologists, conservation groups, lobstermen and state officials who view alewives as a vital link in the complex food chain that supports the St. Croix and the Gulf of Maine.

Speaking in opposition were registered guides, lodge owners and leaders of the Passamaquoddy Tribe who fought successfully for a 1995 law that blocked alewives from returning to the river to spawn.

“The possible economic impacts of reintroduction of alewives goes far beyond the imagination,” Gov. Bill Nicholas of the Passamaquoddy Tribe in Princeton told the Marine Resources Committee on Monday.

The bill before the committee would effectively reopen fishways at the Woodland and Great Falls dams to allow up to 120,000 alewives to pass upstream. That’s a fraction of the estimated 2.6 million that returned to the St. Croix in 1987.

The bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, cited the importance of the alewives as forage fish. “They provide food to many other fish up on the food chain and also provide food to many other organisms.”

Critics, however, expressed fear that alewives could ruin the renowned landlocked salmon and smallmouth bass fishing in the areas around Grand Lake Stream and Spednic Lake.

“I feel certain that if you allow alewives back in the watershed, we are going to have devastation” in the bass and salmon fishery, said Harry Bailey, a former legislator who owns Bailey’s Camps on Big Lake.

Others, however, say sea-run alewives do not feed while returning to freshwater rivers to spawn and that baby alewives will become food for bass and salmon.

The bill has received support from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and the Atlantic Salmon Federation. And while bass are a hugely popular sport fish, a supporter of the proposal noted that they are an invasive species.

“Alewives are Mainers. They are from here,” said Diane Cowan, executive director of The Lobster Conservancy. “Smallmouth bass, on the other hand, are from away.”

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-03-04-08 1102EST