The Incredible Journey Of The American Shad

A beautiful look at the upstream spawning migration of the American Shad as they move from the ocean up into the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. Learn how these anadromous fish battle waterfalls, rapids, and hydroelectric dams to get to their freshwater spawning grounds. See the famous Rock Dam in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, and watch the shad as they go upstream on their spawning run to lay their eggs.
Camera used to film this video.
Fujifilm XP 140 Waterproof camera
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GOOGLE EARTH ATTRIBUTION DATA
This map includes data from: Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCOLandsat / CopernicusIBCAOU.S. Geological SurveyPGC/NASAImagery from the dates:11/30/1998-12/14/2015

[@sammaskill2620]

You’re the Bob Ross of underwater, photography, and storytelling of these fish. Love the videos!

[@TheDave333]

Thank you so much! I love making them. 😁

[@angelawhite2022]

I work at a salmon counter fence. The American Shad show up just before the salmon. They all make it through using our system!

[@TheDave333]

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing some good news! Where are you at?

[@ceresuziel5089]

So nice Dave, what a beautiful thing to see with your help.

[@TheDave333]

Thank you so much. It was a fun video to make.

[@kunaiwithchain5278]

nice, i just moved to cali so this is a nice find for when i go fish for them

[@TheDave333]

Awesome. Best of luck.

[@chisaquaticvibe6524]

This is beautiful!

[@TheDave333]

Thanks Chi 😁😁😁

[@chisaquaticvibe6524]

@@TheDave333 It is truly my pleasure! ❤😁

[@CMZneu]

Gread video man!

[@TheDave333]

Glad you liked it!

[@todderschannel4705]

Have you considered doing a vid about the eels that find their way to the tributaries of the Finger lakes of New York.

[@TheDave333]

Yes, American eels (Anguilla rostrata), however some people also refer to the Sea Lamprey as eels even though they're not. I'm filming both of them at the moment. The American Eels are especially difficult to film, and I'm going out to film the Lampreys in a few hours.

[@moonpleco5083]

As it's seen on Google Maps, there is Research institute near Rock Dam devoted to migrating fish. They should strongly support protection for fishes, making their route easier and safer to pass. Voice of such institute must be heard by dumb politicians and herd of clerks.

[@TheDave333]

Yes, I'm very familiar with that Anadromous fish facility. It's right near the spot where I filmed this video. I know several people who work there and I've helped them out in the past when they were studying Atlantic Salmon. However, the federal government stopped funding research on the salmon after the effort to restore them was judged a failure. . . They test out large fish passage ways there, and are now working more with American Shad and the Shortnose Sturgeon. They're good people with a very difficult job. There's also the Connecticut River Conservancy that does a lot of work trying to remove dams and educate the public about how important our rivers are.

[@moonpleco5083]

​@@TheDave333 thanks for interesting information. Sad that federal government no longer provide financial support for study salmons. Perhaps, at least some paths for fish will be find. Or dams can be built on another river, let Connecticut River be fish friendly ? Electricity is first need for today humans, no doubt, however another water can serve for it. USA have so many energy sources and can freely use it ( not like UE member countries 😠), let some rivers in peace or divide paths... Anyway thermonuclear power plant would solve energy problems, sadly not today yet.

[@TheDave333]

I am not a fan of nuclear power. . . Too many risks, and people are foolish. Companies always put profit before long-term safety and common sense. 😠

[@moonpleco5083]

​@@TheDave333 Then you should like thermonuclear energy. Fission reaction in popular nuclear plants create dangerous wastes especially numerous long lived, highly radioactive isotopes. This is main concern. Thermonuclear synthesis is relatively clean, some waste (much less !) of course are present but they are short lived, less radioactive ,much more easy to storage, recycle etc. what is some waste tritium compared to e.g. cesium or plutonium polluting environment for hundreds years. Thermonuclear reactor would produce incredible amount of energy, quite clean - it's called "little Sun on Earth". Process is well known for around 80 years but providing energy for this process in economically way is big barrier. We could be safe having this energy. So called today " green, clean energy" is not that clean and safe!(and today's nuclear power too). By the way, in cooling ponds of nuclear power plants often live and thrive different fish! They look big and healthy 🐠🐟🐡🦈. I saw them with my own eyes during sightseeing!

[@TheDave333]

It is amazing that fish can survive in the cooling ponds of nuclear power plants! I'm hoping they figure out how to make cold fusion work in the near future. 😁

[@PaulsFishroom]

Very informative as usual Dave. Excellent 🤓👍

[@TheDave333]

Thanks Paul! 😁

[@turkeydinnerchewie2499]

Great video! For many of the freshwater mussel species I have worked with, a large part of the reason for their decline is the host fish not being able to migrate past the dams. Spectaclecase (Cumberlandia monodonta) hasn’t really reproduced in the Clinch River (at least in VA) due a dam preventing its host mooneye for migrating upriver.

[@TheDave333]

Thanks for watching the video. Tessellated darters and the federally endangered Dwarf Wedgemussels in my area have a similar relationship. So many things are connected to each other in nature, and when we interfere with one species there's a cascading effect that ripples across the entire ecosystem. Humans are so shortsighted.

[@turkeydinnerchewie2499]

@@TheDave333 and this relationship is pretty similar for almost all of the ~300 freshwater mussel species in the US. I am excited for your mussel video whenever that comes out!

[@TheDave333]

I've filmed mussels / clams in this same river, and I need to get better footage this summer. There are some large beds near where this video was made. I've never kept them in an aquarium, and at this point I'm not even sure what type of mussels they are! I suppose I'll have to bring a couple of them home for closeup filming. They're very common in this river, and my experience is very limited with bivalves, so we'll have to see how it goes.

[@turkeydinnerchewie2499]

@@TheDave333 I think you’d need to look into whether or not you are able to bring home freshwater bivalves in your state. I know in VA you can’t. There’s also the option of going to a freshwater mussel hatchery in your area to film and learn more. I’m sure they would be excited to have more attention. Cronin Aquatic Resource Center in Sunderland, MA might be your closest one.

[@tamarrajames3590]

I would love to see that video too…didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you got my attention.🖤🇨🇦

[@haasheesh6978]

Thanks Dave, awesome video✌

[@TheDave333]

You're very welcome. 😁

[@vibes951]

Cool!

[@TheDave333]

Thanks!

[@tamarrajames3590]

What a beautiful stretch of river that is! I used to watch the salmon run in northern BC, and the great effort all these fish put forth to reach their spawning sites always amazes me. It is difficult enough for them to go upstream with the snow melt raising the water levels and quickening the currents without human industry adding to the strain. Nature provides such incredible displays of power and determination so close to us, and so few stop to admire the beauty, or wonder if we are causing trouble for these amazing creatures. Thank you for bringing this issue to the forefront of attention. We all need to be more aware of our impact on the world around us.💖🖤🇨🇦

[@TheDave333]

I couldn't agree more. We are kindred spirits. . . Unfortunately, the dams around here wiped out the Atlantic Salmon many years ago. They were hit the hardest by the dams because they're much more selective about where they spawn. They won't spawn in the mainstem of the river. . . So, they needed to swim up into the smaller tributary streams that had even more dams on them! It's such a shame. 😞

[@tamarrajames3590]

@@TheDave333 That is horrible. I shouldn’t be surprised by things like that, given how many similar situations like it have occurred just within my memory, but seriously…you would think by now humans would be taking more remedial steps than we are. Countless non profit groups and organizations struggle against corporate stupidity every day with too little success. Sometimes I think Mother Earth will shrug us off as a failed species, and if She does, it will be through our own actions that we will become extinct. Then I remember how many people are working toward solutions and accomplishing good things. So I try to educate young people about the beauty and balance of Nature, and hope one day enough will get it to make a difference. Your love for the complex interweaving of living things shows in the content you create, like the long, slow dying of a lake, to the birth of a wetland, and all that follows. Thank you Dave, for always seeing the beauty and wonder, and for sharing it.💖🖤🇨🇦

[@TheDave333]

Mother Earth will go on, with or without us. 💖💖💖us

[@tamarrajames3590]

@@TheDave333 That She will, and She will repair the damage in Her own way, as She always does. It is we who cannot live without Her. You are a lovely person .💖🖤🇨🇦

[@ElijahTremblay]

Best skatepark I ever skated was in turners falls. Tried to catch a walleye but ended up with a few smallies instead

[@TheDave333]

I skate Turners. . . Great park.

[@the__archive]

My new favorite channel!

[@TheDave333]

Awesome thank you so much!

[@Shaden0040]

Nice to see that you're from Massachusetts too. I just recently learned a few years ago that shadow earned interesting fish in the fact that they're related to the American trouts family as well as the salmon family. it was funny because I noticed someone else was talking about shadow and they showed them up close and I said Gee that looks like a trout but it also looks like a salmon and I mentioned that to this person whose channel it was And he's like yes good observation they're related to both. so it's an interesting fish that it's related to the larger salmon and the similar sized trout in some cases some cases trouts a little bit larger someone's a little bit smaller but I always start to look like a cross between a brook trout and a salmon like a what do you call it what's the one with a big jaws on it when it becomes sexually mature coho no chinook Salmon so kind of looks like a cross between the two. like I said it's a weird little fish kind of cool.

[@TheDave333]

They are really cool fish with an amazing story. Thanks for watching. 😁

[@chisaquaticvibe6524]

Hey Dave, have you ever seen a harbor seal in one of these rivers? They often follow shad migrations.

[@TheDave333]

No I haven't . I'm too far inland / upstream for that.

[@chisaquaticvibe6524]

@@TheDave333 They really cute and cool. But I prefer sea lions which are more active seals.

[@TheDave333]

Sea lions seem scary . . .

[@AmrothSkywalker]

I was shad fishing in the Merrimack river in MA (in completely fresh water-about 15 miles from ocean), all of a sudden i saw a large creature poke its eyes up out of the water and next thing you know the thing was 10 yards in front of me looking right at me, it was a seal! I dont know the difference between lion/seal but needless to say i didnt catch a single shad after he came through!

[@donald2167]

In the PNW, Shad are great crab bait

[@TheDave333]

That works! They taste great, but have a lot of bones.

[@norberthemmingsway]

It's odd to hear about how damaging and disruptive hydroelectric dams can be. They seem like a really clean energy on paper source since they generate electricity from nothing but flowing water. I also never considered how they can harm fish populations by killing those going back to the ocean. I wonder how that effects juvenile salmon in the PNW.

[@TheDave333]

The hydroelectric dams in my area wiped out the Atlantic Salmon in the 1800s, but they were built long before the ones in the PNW. I think most of the modern dams provide an upstream passage for fish, but juveniles on the way to the ocean are still a concern. There are special designs for downstream passage that help them get around the turbines, but I'm not sure how effective they are.

[@goodun2974]

​@@TheDave333, New England dams of the 1800's weren't built for generating electrical power, they were built as a *mechanical* power source for grinding grain and making textiles, and to control agricultural water sources.

[@user-ke7ey5hv9c]

Sturgeon are extirpated in Alabama because of damming 😢

[@goodun2974]

Any plans to film a video of sturgeon in the Connecticut River, or the striper run in the spring as they follow spawning baitfish all the way up into Massachusetts?

[@TheDave333]

I've been hoping to see a Shortnose Sturgeon while snorkeling / filming at the rock dam, and if I do I'll definitely make a video on them. Apparently, they spawn there. They're fairly rare so who knows! I could go to the Silvio O Conte Anadromous fish Research Lab and see if they'll allow me to film some of their captive sturgeon. . . I would love that so much! They're amazing fish! As far as the Stripers go, we get a few this far inland, there's a lot more of them south of here in Holyoke and I don't really go there much, but never say never. Stripers this far inland are few and far in between. Right now I'm working on getting all of the footage I need for a lamprey video. I just need to film them spawning. . . . Not an easy task, and I've been working on them for a couple years now. There's so much ignorance, hype, and misinformation surrounding them and I'd really like to set the record straight!!

[@goodun2974]

@@TheDave333 , I also noticed you have some videos on various freshwater shrimp; Growing up on Long Island Sound we often caught grass shrimp as bycatch in our drag-nets when we were catching minnows for bait. The shrimp were too small and fragile to stay on a hook, but they are an important forage species; there were several incidents where large pods of schoolie stripers came into shallow water over the mud flats, and you could see them breaking the surface all over the place, but no matter what lure we tried they were uninterested. I finally managed to piss off a couple of bass by pretty much hitting them in the head with a surface popper, and they struck at it out of sheer annoyance. When I gutted them, their stomachs were packed full of grass shrimp. After learning this, I tried using some soft tail jigs that looked kinda like shrimp but the bass just weren't interested. It wasn't just the bass that we're gorging themselves on these schools of grass shrimp; I had a doormat-size fluke follow a rubber eel right up to the boat, and I even caught a couple of sea robins on a swimming plug! (By the way when I was a kid in the early1970s, stripers were everywhere, and the size limit for keepers was only 16 inches; the fish became much scarcer in the 1980s and so they raised the size limit to 36 inches minimum).

[@TheDave333]

I can see that you've got a lot of experience on the water! Those grass shrimp are eaten by just about everything, and that's why they have those translucent bodies. They need to be cryptic to survive. I love that you caught a sea robin on a swimming plug. They're such cool little fish. I went snorkeling off the coast of Maine a few years back and saw a ton of huge stripers. Froze my a## off, but it was worth it! The stripers follow the blueback herring schools up the river, but the herring populations are in trouble. Juvenile American eels seem to work. Last summer I saw and filmed an American eel eating a dead shad by entering through its mouth!!! Those shad have big super tough scales, so the eel went for the soft parts by entering through the shad's mouth!!! Amazing stuff.

[@goodun2974]

@@TheDave333 , Eels are surprisingly predatory. I baited a hook with a big softshell blue crab once in hopes of catching a large striper but instead I caught a big eel. We used to bait eel pots with crushed green crabs (which of course are an invasive species) and caught lots of Eels this way although I suspect the eels came into the traps more for the minnows that came in for the crushed crabs. Some of the locals would use a crushed up horseshoe crab as minnow trap/eel pot bait instead, but I've always had an infinity for horseshoe crabs and would never hurt one. Every spring there would be thousands of horseshoe crabs coming up onto the beach imto mate; it was quite a sight. PS, Horseshoe crab blood is actually used for medical research and is extracted without hurting the crabs, which are then released. PS, the biggest eel I've ever seen got caught in a minnow trap in a stream near my house, a dozen or so miles upstream as the crow flies from the CT River!

[@blakenelson8385]

Little cofused. Are these same shad we buy as shad sides from reservoirs in Kansas?

[@TheDave333]

Hi and thanks for watching the video. They're not the same fish. The shad sides you buy in Kansas are from Gizzard Shad. The American Shad is a very different fish. Strangely enough they're not even closely related to each other.

[@goodun2974]

​@@TheDave333, gizzard shad are an invasive species in some New England lakes. They eat a lot of plankton biomass and can ruin the lake ecology for native species.

[@angelawhite2022]

Newfoundland, Canada.

[@TheDave333]

Wow, that's at the northern end of their range! Unfortunately, we've lost all of our native salmon here in Massachusetts. And so far this year, we've passed just over 27,000 Shad. . . I'm waiting for the Sea Lamprey to do some more filming of them. It's a project that I've been working on for the last two years. Amazing creatures! I'm hoping to be able to film them spawning this year.

[@angelawhite2022]

@@TheDave333 that is so sad! This is the main reason we use the counters, to monitor and maintain their populations and notice if something goes even slightly off. The shad coming through are just a lovey bonus! We have been watching for lampreys, but so far haven’t seen one. 😢 I’m amazed by every creature I see out there… good luck with your lamprey project!

[@TheDave333]

We use counters at the fish ladders to monitor the populations as well. We're starting to get more lamprey now, so I'm just about ready to head down to the river to film! Then a little later in the season, I'll be filming spawning Tessellated Darters in a different, smaller river. The water is my home away from home! Best of luck in all of your endeavors.

[@angelawhite2022]

@@TheDave333 sounds like you are living the dream! I’m jealous lol. I totally hear you, I’m also drawn to all bodies of water. I was lucky to be born on an island I guess lol. Can’t wait to see your videos! Stay safe out there! Cheers

[@TheDave333]

I was born on an island as well! St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands. 🌴🌴🌴

[@HilaryPierce]

Hey Dave-- your content is fantastic. I work as an art director for an edtech company and we are currently creating a game for middle school students about saving and reintroducing the American Shad to the James River in Virginia, USA. We'd love to talk to you about the possibility of including some of your footage of shad in our game! If you'd be open to this we'd love to connect with you!

[@TheDave333]

Hi, I can be reached at: the [e-mail]

[@moonpleco5083]

Interesting and important video. American shad's spawning custom is similar to salmons'. Sounds bad that people don't care about poor fish lives 😢. Politicians are only talking heads 😡

[@TheDave333]

I agree 100%

[@nicksweeney5176]

Firrrrst...!!!

[@TheDave333]

I think you have the record for firsts! Thanks for your speed and accuracy. 😁😁😁🦈🐟🦐🦠 ❤

[@tamarrajames3590]

Since you are first, I hope you go back and read comments from those who arrive later. The more time we spend on his channel, the more the algorithm notices it and recommends it to new viewers who will share the pleasure and beauty of TheDave’s work.🖤🇨🇦