The Sebasticook Watershed lies in the heart of Maine.  The watershed was formed during the glacial period over 12,000 years ago . Approximately 70,000 people live in the Sebasticook Watershed today. The alewife has been a part of our history for all of its history. This small fish is anadromous. It lives most of its life in the ocean but comes to fresh water to spawn.

Alewives tie our ocean, rivers and lakes together, providing vital nutrients and forage needed to make healthy watersheds. Between and within those various habitats everything eats alewives.

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The alewives are a prolific fish, a herring. They  lay  up to a 100,000 eggs a piece per season. Their eggs and sperm provide nutrients for the fresh water fish in the lakes where they spawn. It is thought that alewives generally do not eat while they are migrating so they do not compete  with the freshwater fish for food. They wait until they return to salt water to feed. And they are planktovores which means they eat plankton at the bottom of the food chain. One oft used name for them is “companion” fish because they escort the larger fish like salmon and shad up the river. The salmon would travel in the center of a herd of alewives and the predators are less likely to spot them and take alewives instead. Stories are told of cod coming into the mouths of the great rivers to eat alewives on their migration, even that alewives are their most favored food.