Around Lancaster County, at least seven old dams have been removed on the Conestoga River and tributaries to aid their swim to a population boom.

In Columbia, officials envision a new riverfront park attracting anglers fishing for them.

Pennsylvania is hoping their restoration will spawn a multi-million-dollar industry.

And dams at Holtwood, Safe Harbor, York Haven and Conowingo, Md., have been forced to spend tens of millions of dollars on fish lifts and ladders to help them upriver to spawn.

But all these expectations and welcome mats are now in jeopardy as the Susquehanna River's migratory American shad population is in a tailspin.

Since a modern-day record 193,000 shad returned from the Atlantic Ocean to their birth river in 2001, shad showing up each spring at the Conowingo Dam has dropped by more than 90 percent.

As of Wednesday, only 19,200 shad had been lifted over the most downriver obstacle. With the silvery fish petering out, the run may well be the lowest since 1990.

Just as disheartening, only 1,043 of those 19,200 had made their way from the Conowingo Dam to the Holtwood Dam, and a mere 400 had swum to the Safe Harbor Dam.

The flowing section of the river upstream of Safe Harbor, between Columbia and the York Haven Dam, is seen as the best hope for the fish to spawn successfully.

This downturn contrasts against a goal of 2 million reproducing shad from Maryland to New York State and a return of recreational fishing.

All this is deflating for public officials, anglers and conservationists alike who have labored since the late 1960s to restore the fish that was a dietary and economic staple up and down the Susquehanna since Colonial times.

"It is depressing," Mike Hendricks, a Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission fisheries biologist who heads the state's shad-stocking effort, said this morning.

East Coast-wide declines in shad populations, commercial fishing, pollution and the rise in striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay have been offered as reasons for the alarming decline.

"Heck, it could even be global warming as it affects ocean currents," says Scott Carney, another PFBC fisheries biologist formerly involved with the shad restoration.

"I think everybody's just speculating now."

Speculating, grumbling and hoping.

Catch-and-release fishing of shad at and below the Conowingo Dam is a popular spring ritual for many area anglers. Mike Acord, co-owner of Susquehanna Fishing Tackle of Lancaster, has heard the complaining among fishers who stop by for shad lures.

"The guys are just not talking about them at all," he says.

"It's my opinion that it's definitely some undocumented bycatch (by commercial fishing in the ocean)," speculates Ray Bleistine, senior scientist for Normandeau Associates, an environmental consulting firm that has monitored shad numbers at Susquehanna dams.

"We have to get reproduction. We need more fish upstream to jump-start this run."

A primary cog in the restoration effort has been taking eggs from female shad in other rivers, fertilizing them and stocking fingerlings in various portions of the Susquehanna. They are "imprinted" with the Susquehanna, swim through dam turbines to the ocean and return about five years later.

Studies show about 83 percent of the returning shad from the ocean are from hatchery-raised shad.

But a decline in shad available for eggs, and disease and water acidity problems at the PFBC's Van Dyke shad hatchery along the Juniata River in Juniata County has dropped stocking from 8 million to 10 million larvae a year to 1.4 million in 2007.

But with disease and water-quality problems out of the way, Hendricks, who also heads the hatchery, is optimistic 5 million healthy fish will be placed in the Susquehanna this year. That might result in boosted shad numbers when they return around 2013, Hendricks says.

The PFBC certainly is not giving up hope of restoring shad to the Susquehanna, says Carney.

"We're still investing a lot of time and effort. Sometimes these fluctuations just happen. We're obviously hoping there is going to be a rebound."


Staff writer Ad Crable can be reached at acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.