September 16, 2009 Researchers go electro-fishing in Maine's Penobscot Play video

(NECN: Amy Sinclair) - Starting next year, dams will start being removed from Maine’s largest river in an ambitious effort to restore salmon and other sea-run fish to the waterway.

It’s called the "Penobscot River Restoration Project."

But before they bring in the heavy equipment, scientists need to find out what's swimming in the Penobscot now.

The Penobscot River has always been popular with anglers. But there's not much sport in this fishing expedition. These fisheries biologists are doing what's called electro-fishing.

Brandon: "It's a relatively standard way of collecting fish we use a generator on a boat to create an electric field a positive and a negative just like on a battery.”

"And they come up right in front of the boat and people on the boat can net them out and place them in a live well on boat and soon fish snap out of their lethargy."

This method of temporarily shocking fish into submission allows scientists to get accurate snapshots of fish communities in different sample sites along the Penobscot and its tributaries.

The data they're collecting will be used to support what's being billed as a world-class river restoration project being led by the Penobscot River restoration trust.

Using some 25 million dollars in federal, state, and private money the trust is buying three dams from the people corporation. They plan to tear down the Veazie and Great Works dams and decommission another dam up

Demolition down on the Great Works Dam is expected to begin next summer. By removing the two lowermost dams on the Penobscot and putting a fish lift here around the Milford dam they expect to restore nearly a thousand miles of river habitat.

Right now only a handful of sea run species like the muscular sea lampray can make the journey past the dams.

The nature conservancy's Josh Royte says this project is being studied around the world as a model for river development because it should restore fish populations without compromising power supply.

Josh: "While they are removing several hydro dams they're actually going to be able to move turbines to other dams. So overall there's no net loss in fact there's a slight gain of renewable energy which is a pretty outstanding aspect of this project.”

With their before data firmly in hand, scientists will return to these waters after the dams come out looking for the return of sea-run species like alewives, herring, shad and salmon.

Josh: "These are fish that will come back in the millions into ponds and tributaries bringing back a new life to this river that it hasn't seen in hundreds of years."

And once again the Penobscot River will be home to some of the best Atlantic salmon habitat and fishing in the country.