Critter Catalog

What do they look like?

Alewives have an overall silvery color with a grayish green back. A black spot at the eye level is directly behind the head. Adults have longitudinal lines that run along the midline of the body. Small alewives have a violet sheen on the sides while adults have a golden cast on their heads and upper parts. They are colored very much like skipjack herring. Scales along the middle of the belly form a raised edge. Females are bigger than males and generally live longer. The body is very rounded and flattened. The head is broadly triangular. The eyes are large and have structures that look like eyelids. The single dorsal fin usually has 13-14 rays but may have 12-16. The tail fin is forked. The anal fin is short and wide with 15-19 rays. Alewives that live at sea tend to be longer, ranging from 255 to 355 mm. Alewives that live in freshwater are about 150 mm in length and mature faster than alewives that live at sea.

• Other Physical Features
• ectothermic
• heterothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• female larger

• Average mass

  110 g

  3.88 oz

  AnAge

• Range length

  100 to 355 mm

  3.94 to 13.98 in

Where do they live?

Alewives are native to the Atlantic Ocean and the lakes and streams that drain to it from Newfoundland to North Carolina. They are "anadromous", which means that they live most of their lives in the sea but migrate into freshwater rivers and streams to breed. They are present, but non-native, in all of the Great Lakes and many lakes in northern New York. In the Great Lakes they are now abundant in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Alewives don't do well in Lake Superior because the water is too cold and lake trout prey heavily on them there. They don't do well in Lake Erie because the lake is too shallow to provide suitable overwintering grounds for large numbers of fish.

Several theories exist on how alewives could have become established in the Great Lakes. Scott and Crossman suggest that alewives may have been accidentally included in a batch of American shad that were used to stock Lake Ontario. The alewives also could have migrated from Lakes Seneca and Cayuga in New York to the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence River. A third argument for the current distribution is that alewives were native to Lake Ontario in small numbers but went unnoticed until a population explosion in 1873.

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic
  • introduced
  • native

What kind of habitat do they need?

Alewives spend most of their time in coastal waters and most are caught in water 56 to 100 m deep at about 4°C. They are sensitive to light and tend to be in deeper waters during daylight hours. They follow the daily movements of zooplankton in the water column. Adults can withstand temperatures up to 25°C and young of the year can live in waters up to 30°C.

• These animals are found in the following types of habitat
• temperate
• saltwater or marine
• freshwater

• Aquatic Biomes
• lakes and ponds
• rivers and streams
• coastal

• Other Habitat Features
• estuarine
• intertidal or littoral

• Range depth

  56 to 100 m

  183.73 to 328.08 ft

How do they grow?

Fertilized eggs are about 0.9 mm in diameter. Three to five days after hatching, the larvae begin to feed. They slowly transform into juvenile fish and remain in fresh water until the fall, growing to 3.8 to 12.5 cm.

How do they reproduce?

Alewives spawn in the spring. The young swim to sea or to deeper parts of large lakes (including the Great Lakes). Migration to spawning grounds happens earlier in warmer areas. Spawning generally starts in April in the south and lasts until the end of May farther north. In all populations, females reach the spawning grounds first and older fish are the first to spawn. The oldest fish recorded at spawning sites were to 10 years old. Spawning occurs in groups of 3 or in pairs.

• Mating System
• polygynandrous (promiscuous)

Females lay their eggs and males fertilize them at the same time. The eggs are sticky at first and may stick to plants or rocks. Within a few hours they settle to the bottom of the lake or river. Alewives lay their eggs over any type of substrate. The number of eggs per female may be 10,000 to 360,000.

In populations that migrate to the sea, adult alewives spend most of their lives at sea but spawn in inland streams. Although they cannot jump obstacles such as dams, they can swim over rapids. Fish in these populations mature at 3 years for males and 4 years for females.

In freshwater populations, fish mature at 2 years for males and 3 years for females. These fish move close to shallow beaches or into streams to spawn. Eggs hatch in 3 to 6 days, depending on how warm the water is.

• Key Reproductive Features
• seasonal breeding
• sexual
• fertilization
  • external
• broadcast (group) spawning
• oviparous

• How often does reproduction occur?

  Alewives breed yearly.

• Breeding season

  Spawning occurs during the spring.

• Range number of offspring

  10,000 to 360,000

• Range time to hatching

  3 to 6 days

• Range age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)

  3 to 4 years

• Range age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)

  2 to 3 years

Alewives do not have any parental investment in their young beyond spawning. The adults leave immediately after spawning in the spring and the young move to the open water in the fall.

• Parental Investment
• no parental involvement
• pre-fertilization
  • provisioning
  • protecting
    • female

How long do they live?

Young alewives have a very high mortality rate. Less than 1% survive to migrate into the sea or large lake. About 70% of adult alewives die each year also. Most die during or shortly after the spawning season. Few alewives in freshwater populations live longer than 5 years.

• Range lifespan
  Status: wild

  10 (high) years

• Typical lifespan
  Status: wild

  5 (high) hours

How do they behave?

There is little information on the social behavior of alewives except for spawning behaviors and feeding patterns. They migrate up streams or to shallow waters to spawn. They make daily movements in the water column, moving up (closer to the surface) at night and down (into deeper waters) during the day. They generally travel in groups.

• Key Behaviors
• natatorial
• diurnal
• nocturnal
• motile
• migratory
• social

Home Range

Alewives are not territorial.

How do they communicate with each other?

We don't know much about how alewives might communicate. Their large eyes probably help them find other alewives, their prey, and stay alert for predators.

• Communication Channels
• tactile
• chemical

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• vibrations
• chemical
• electric

What do they eat?

Little is known about the feeding habits of alewives that live at sea. Alewives in freshwater populations eat mostly zooplankton, especially small crustaceans such as copepods, cladocerans, mysids, and ostracods. When they grow larger than 11.9 cm, they feed mostly on larger, bottom dwelling crustaceans. Some spawning adults eat small fish or fish eggs when in shallow waters.

• Primary Diet
• planktivore

• Animal Foods
• fish
• eggs
• aquatic crustaceans
• zooplankton

What eats them and how do they avoid being eaten?

Alewives have many predators. In freshwater, their main predators are burbot, lake trout, eels, bass, walleye, and whitefish. Introduced predators include chinook and coho salmon. Little is known about the predators of alewives that live at sea but their hatchlings have a high mortality rate. As few as one out of 80,000 will reach the sea.

• Known Predators

  • burbot (Lota lota)
  • lake trou (Salvelinus namaycush)
  • eels (Anguillidae)
  • bigmouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)
  • walleye (Sander vitreus)
  • whitefish species (Coregonus)
  • chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)
  • coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch)

What roles do they have in the ecosystem?

Alewives are now the most abundant planktivores in Lake Ontario and are the main prey of salmon in the Great Lakes. Their presence in the Great Lakes has caused the decline of many native fish species because of competition.

There isn't much known about the parasites of alewives, but acanthocephalans, cestodes, trematodes, copepods, and nematodes have all been found in populations that live in the sea. Alewives that live in freshwater lakes don't have as many parasites.

Do they cause problems?

Alewives have been considered a nuisance in the Great Lakes since their population explosion in 1873. Live fish can clog industrial intake pipelines and sometimes die in large numbers, resulting in lots of dead fish on beaches in the spring. Coho salmon were introduced in the Great Lakes to control alewives and are now important sport fish in the region.

Since alewives feed mainly on plankton and bottom-dwelling crustaceans, alewives are particularly good at accumulating DDT and other toxins in their fatty tissues. For this reason it is best not to eat too many of the fish predators of alewives, such as salmon from the Great Lakes.

How do they interact with us?

Alewives support an important commercial fishery in the Atlantic Ocean. They are packaged fresh, smoked, salted, or pickled for human food and are often sold as “river herring.” Fishermen use weirs, traps, gill nets, and dip nets for alewives, which they consider one of the easiest fish to catch. Alewives have other uses, including pet food, lobster and snow crab bait, and processing into fishmeal and fish oil. Alewives are not usually fished in the Great Lakes since these are small and too bony to eat. However, recently there has been a trend to use them for pet food and fish meal.

• Ways that people benefit from these animals:
• food
• body parts are source of valuable material

Are they endangered?

Alewives not listed as an endangered species, but in many places in their natural range, their habitat is threatened by dams along spawning rivers. On the other hand, their introduction into the Great Lakes and other areas resulted in declines in native fish in those areas.

• IUCN Red List

  Not Evaluated

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  No special status

• State of Michigan List

  No special status

Some more information...

Alosa pseudoharengus was formerly classified as Alosa pseudoharengus. Common names for A. pseudoharengus include alewife, gaspereau, sawbelly, kyak, kiack, river herring, and glut herring.

Alewives have some interesting cultural and historical connections. Alewives are the fish the Native Americans in New England buried with crops as fertilizer (Grosvenor, 1965). The silvery coating on the scales is sometimes used in making costume jewelry and is called pearl essence by the jewelry industry (Grosvenor, 1965). (Grosvenor, 1965)

Contributors

Vanessa Tobias (author), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, William Fink (editor, instructor), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Renee Sherman Mulcrone (editor).

References

Daniels, R. 2001. Untested assumptions: the role of canals in the dispersal of sea lamprey, alewife, and other fishes in the eastern United States. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 60: 309-329.

Grosvenor, M. 1965. Wondrous World of Fishes. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.

Klumb, R., L. Rudstam, E. Mills. 2003. Comparison of Alewife Young-of-the-Year and Adult Respiration and Swimming Speed Bioenergetics Model Parameters: Implications of Extrapolation. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 132: 1089-1103.

Madenjian, C., J. Holuszko, T. Desorcie. 2003. Growth and Condition of Alewives in Lake Michigan, 1984-2001. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 132: 1104-1116.

Maine Department of Marine Resources, 2004. "Maine Department of Marine Resources" (On-line). Fact Sheet- Anadromous Alewife. Accessed October 27, 2004 at http://www.state.me.us/dmr/rm/alewifefactsheet.htm.

Scott, W., E. Crossman. 1998. The Freshwater Fishes of Canada. Oakville, Ontario, Canada: Galt House Publications Ldt..

Scott, W., M. Scott. 1988. Atlantic Fishes of Canada. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Bulletin of Fisheries and Aquatic Science (University of Toronto Press).

Smith, S. 1970. Species Interactions of the Alewife in the Great Lakes. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 4: 754-764.

Trautman, M. 1957. The Fishes of Ohio. Baltimore, Md.: Ohio State University Press (Waverly Press).

U.S. Department of Agriculture, N. 2004. "Invasivespecies.gov A gateway to Federal and State invasive species activities and programs" (On-line). Accessed October 27, 2004 at http://www.invasivespecies.gov/profiles/alewife.shtml.