Amoskeag Fishways

This past Monday our homeschool group took a field trip to the Amoskeag Fishways in Manchester, New Hampshire. It's fascinating place! We learned about the ecology, biology and history of the Merrimack River, especially the destruction of the native fish population ("Amoskeag" means "great fishing place") due to man-made dams built in the 1800s and 1900s (for textile and hydroelectric power) and the huge, ongoing restoration effort to restore these native fish populations. It was fish season (the time of year when anadromous fish return to fresh water from the ocean to spawn) and we saw migrating salmon in the Amoskeag fish ladder. They were HUGE! I never knew those fish were that big. We had a really good time.





This is the fish ladder. You can't see the fish, but they're in the water.

An Atlantic salmon! (The people here cheated. The fish didn't really swim all the way from the Atlantic, they were trucked to Amoskeag from Massachusetts and placed in the river).

This is an external view of the fish ladder. One of the old Amoskeag (textile) mills is in the background.