1 American Currents Vol. 29, No. 2 Herrings and Shads of North America: Diversity, Natural History, Conservation, and Aquarium Care Christopher Scharpf 1107 Argonne Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218
[email protected] “. it is a fish of crowds, not one to occurring in Atlantic Coast drainages of the U.S. and Canada, strike out much of its own.” and two species ranging from the Gulf Coast upwards — John Hay through the Mississippi Basin into Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Some Atlantic species occur far outside their ilvery, slab-sided, and generically fish-shaped, native ranges, usually in lakes and reservoirs, either from members of the family Clupeidae—herrings, intentional introductions to provide forage for stocked game- shads, sardines, pilchards, sprats, and menhaden fish, or by passage through manmade waterways.1 The S (collectively called clupeids)—are easily overlooked American shad (A. sapidissima) was planted into California’s in favor of more charismatic or distinctively assembled fishes. Sacramento River in 1871 and has spread up the Pacific But their role as an abundant food source for higher predators, Coast and across the Bering Strait into the Kamchatka including man and fishes eaten by man, makes them impos- Peninsula. Apparently, temperature anomalies and ocean cur- sible to ignore. Pound for pound, clupeids are arguably the rents caused by El Niños have proven to be conducive to most important fishes in the world. American shad reproduction (Ebbesmeyer and Hinrichsen, 1997), as have the reduced-current areas created by dams Diversity and Distribution (Hinrichsen and Ebbesmeyer, 1998). Today, the largest American shad run occurs in the Columbia River of the Nature, recognizing a good thing, wisely made clupeids Pacific Northwest.