Alewife spawning aided by fish ladders across Long Island

Long Island Morning Edition

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A special election tomorrow to fill a vacancy on the Southampton Town Board pits a Democratic lawyer against a Republican former councilman in a contest centered on housing issues.

Democrat John J. Leonard, 55, and Republican Richard Martel, 65, both of Hampton Bays, are vying to succeed Democrat Tommy John Schiavoni after his election in November to the New York State Assembly. Tara Smith reports in NEWSDAY that the victor in Tuesday’s election will serve the remainder of Schiavoni’s term, which expires Dec. 31. Both Leonard and Martel said they will seek a full four-year term in the general election on Nov. 4.

Democrats now hold a 3-1 majority on the Southampton Town Board.

Early voting ended Sunday. Voting tomorrow runs from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at standard Southampton polling sites.

Voters in this special election are the first in Suffolk to cast their ballots on new touch screen machines being tested by the Board of Elections under a pilot program. The Suffolk County Legislature earlier this month approved $35 million to the board for the new voting machines. The agency has yet to determine which system it will purchase, said John Alberts, the board's Democratic commissioner.

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The alewife spawning season that begins this month across Long Island will be helped by several fish passages constructed over the past two years to provide the feeder fish access to spawning waters long barred by manmade dams. Early results are in from one the newest so-called fish ladders installed just south of the Peconic River near Riverhead, and while encouraging, they are far below expectations, biologists said.

Mark Harrington reports in NEWSDAY that alewife, also known as river herring, are a vital food source for fish, birds and mammals in Long Island waterways, where they traverse from saltwater ocean and bays to local creeks and rivers to spawn in freshwater lakes and ponds. They are a food source for everything from predator finfish to ospreys and whales, but they are off limits to local fishers.

After female alewives lay 50,000 to 150,000 eggs each, adult alewives eventually move back out to the bay and the sea, as much as 100 miles out, by May’s end at the latest. Their offspring follow as juveniles in the fall.

The past decade has seen considerable effort made across Long Island to provide spawning alewives with new access to waterways that had been outside the fishes’ reach. These fish ladders, some costing more than $1 million, have been put in place from Rockville Centre to the East End in the past five years. One closely watched passage is on a section of the Little River in Riverside just south of downtown Riverhead, where conservationist groups and government led the building of a fish passage completed in 2023 that allows river herring to swim up a stainless steel chute beside the Woodhull Dam.

The $1.2 million project allows the fish to make their way from the Peconic River in Riverhead, where there is another successful ladder at Grangebel Park, before reaching the Byron H. Young Fish Passage at Little River. There, those that make it across can spawn as far away as Wildwood Lake about a mile to the south, after more than a century of being prevented by the Woodhull Dam.

Last year was the first full year of that new fish ladder’s operation, and the results, logged by cameras reviewed by Suffolk County Community College biologists, indicated a slow start. Camera data from 2024 showed that of the upward of 40,000 alewives that gathered in a roiling pool at the base of the dam, only 983 river herring made it through the fish ladder, according to Kellie McCartin, professor of marine biology at Suffolk County Community College. "Ideally we would love more fish to go over," she said, "but considering last year was the first year, I’m very optimistic we’ll get a higher percentage coming across this year."