the species was no longer mentioned in the Reports of the Commissioner of 

 Sea s.nd Shore Fisheries o 



Clues to the causes of the abrupt decline in the shad catch in the lower 

 Kennebec, are few, Surpri singly j, there is very little comment or speculation 

 in the official records as to the cause of the decline. 



The fortunate circumstance that shad landings in the Kennebec were fre- 

 quently reported by counties^ both m Federal and State statistics of landings^ 

 makes it possible to isolate, to a degree, the possible factors which were 

 causing the-declineo From Augusta to the sea^ there are three counties border- 

 ing the Kennebec r Kennebec County, Sagadahoc County, and Lincoln Coup.tyo 

 Kennebec County includes the upper portion of the river belovr Augusta, The 

 fisher^'- for shad in Kennebec County was practically nonexistent by the time 

 statistics of landings began to be collected with regularityo The reports 

 of the Ccmmissioner of ^es. and Shore Fisheries do not show any landings for 

 Kennebec County ever the period for which shad landings are reported„ The 

 Federal reports, however, show landings for Kennebec County for the years 1902, 

 1905, and 1919 o It is probable that the small landings for Kennebec county were 

 included with Sagadahoc County in the State statistics snd„ possib]y^ in some 

 of the Federal statistics. In Table 2, landings of Kennebec County are in- 

 cluded with Sagadahoc County whenver they ai'e shown separatelyo 



Lincoln County landings of shad consist entirely of landings from one 

 source^ the Eastern river (a tributary of the Kennebec). It is thus possible 

 tc distinguish the catch of the Eastern river from the rest of the Kennebec 

 because of its isolation from the rest of the Merrymeeting Bay district and be- 

 cause it lies entirely within Lincoln County, Since there are no towns on the 

 Lincoln County side of the Kennebec whei:e shad could have been landed and cre- 

 dited to Lincoln County, the Lincoln County landings reported in both the 

 Federal and State statistics may be considered to represent entirely the catch 

 from the Eastern River, There is, of course, some possibility that a part of 

 the Eastern river catch may have been landed in and credited to Sagadahoc 

 County, 



Landings from Sagadahoc ^^ounty, on the other hand, include landings from 

 the Androscoggin, the Cathance, the Abagadasset, and Merrymeeting Bay proper, 

 as well as the small catches from Kennebec County. The point of importance is, 

 however, that these landings represent a unity of conditions - the conditions 

 of the Merrymeeting Bay district including the influence of the Androscoggin 

 on the bay. The Eastern river, because of its isolation from these conditions, 

 was not so directly influenced by them, especially as concerns the pollution 

 from the Androscoggin, 



The above argiiment is validated to a degree by the pattern of fluctuations 

 of catch in the Kennebec proper (Sagadahoc and Kennebec counties) and in the 

 Eastern river (Lincoln County) , as is shown in Table 2 and Figure 1, 



23 



