The CEO of the James River Association warned in November that shad — “America’s founding fish” — is on the brink of collapse on the James River.
Reasons for the stark decline include not just overfishing and dams blocking the fish from their spawning grounds but also poor water quality and high sediment loads from stormwater runoff. High sedimentation blocks sunlight from reaching aquatic grasses that serve as habitat for fish and other aquatic wildlife, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. For shad, especially, these grasses help shelter young shad from predators.
A number of large solar projects are projected for the James River basin, including a 2,000-acre project that lies 1/2 mile from the James itself and
just approved by Buckingham County. Every utility-scale solar project so far in Virginia has caused significant stormwater runoff and erosion, especially during the long construction phase. Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality estimates that construction sites, such as utility-scale solar sites, produce 200 times more runoff than agricultural land and 2,000 times more runoff than woodland.
American shad on ‘brink of collapse’ in James River, says conservation group
Scientists records historic fish’s lowest abundance level yet in the James
Virginia Mercury, 17 Nov 2021, by Sarah Vogelsong
For centuries, the James River — the Mighty James, America’s Founding River, the waterway that sustained generations of Algonquin-speaking tribes and became the entry point for European settlement on the North American continent — came alive in the waning days of winter.
Every year, the waterway that twists through the heart of Virginia suddenly would be transformed into a muscular line of flesh as schools of American shad numbering more than a million fought their way upriver 250 miles from the Chesapeake Bay to Lynchburg.
The shad remembered the James River, where they had been born and to which they returned each year to spawn, and for years the bony fish loomed large in Virginia life. Watermen built a living on their backs. Political candidates stumped for office over wooden planks of smoked shad. Everyday folks kept recipes for combining their roe with eggs, toast, grits. Shad was so ever-present in Virginia and along the East Coast that writer John McPhee christened it America’s “founding fish.”
But as the years have passed, late February and early March on the James have become progressively more still, increasingly more quiet. And 2021 was the stillest year yet. This year, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science detected the lowest levels of American shad its scientists had ever recorded in the James. In an annual report on the state of the river, the James River Association concluded the population is less than half a percent of a modest abundance target not achieved since 1984.
“America’s founding fish is on the brink of collapse on America’s founding river,” James River Association CEO Bill Street told reporters Tuesday.