Just before 8 a.m. on a summer morning, Jennifer Noll fired up a pickup truck fitted with a full-size trailer and 250-gallon holding tank parked in the Augusta parking lot of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
Noll, a department biologist, pulled out and headed north, to the Lockwood Dam in Waterville.
Her mission that morning — to collect a pair of adult salmon trapped in the Kennebec River below the dam and trying to swim north.
"As soon as the fish come in, the dam staff let us know, and we try to get to the dam within an hour and a half or so," Noll said.
For the last two decades, Maine has tried to restore salmon on the Kennebec by trapping fish at the Waterville dam and carrying them by vehicle almost 60 miles away to lay eggs in the rich spawning grounds of the Sandy River. It's called "trap and truck."
Noll is part of a team that is on call 14 hours a day, almost 6 months a year, to collect fish almost as soon as they get to the dam.
Timing is important — Noll said if the salmon linger too long in the warm water below the dam after an exhausting migration they could drain their energy reserves or even compromise their fertility.
And a driver will show up every time there's a call, even if there's just one salmon.
"Yes, even if there's one," Noll said. "Because they're endangered species, we're moving them upstream. We need every fish that we can possibly get."
Atlantic salmon used to migrate up and down the Kennebec River by the thousands. But for generations, their passage has been blocked by a series of hydropower dams on the river and the population dwindled to almost nothing. Atlantic Salmon were listed as a federal endangered species in 2000.
Six years later, dam owner Brookfield opened a fish lift — basically a big elevator — at the Waterville dam. And Maine started the time and labor intensive process of restoring salmon by hand.
"We're going from a handful of fish up to our biggest year, about 150 fish here on the Kennebec River. So while it is growing, it's a very, very slow process," Noll said.
After about half an hour on the road, Noll pulled up to the dam in Waterville. She hopped out of the truck and started filling the tank with river water.
The fish lift, a huge metal cage, is operated from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. from May through October. Dam operators use underwater cameras to identify fish in the trap and haul it up to funnel those inside into holding tanks. The traps also carry river herring, eels and other species over the barrier.
After filling the tank, Noll added enough ice to cool the water and help prevent temperature shock when the fish are introduced to the cooler Sandy River upstream.
Noll weighed and measured the two salmon caught in the trap and took scale samples.
Then she used a rubber sleeve to carry each salmon down from the dam to the waiting tank.
After that, it's back on the road. Noll said the fish should be comfortable for the hour-and-a-half drive into the western Maine foothills.
"I don't want to give ourselves timelines, but I don't know that we would want to truck a whole lot further than we're doing right now," she said.
Over the drive, Noll stopped three times to check on the fish, take the water temperature and make the oxygen and recirculatory equipment were working.
Sometimes on these pit stops passersby notice the tank and get curious, Noll said.
"People will stop us and ask, 'What's in your tank?' And they're not used to seeing three-foot-long salmon, so that's a pretty fun interaction we get to have with the public," she said.
Atlantic salmon used to be found on rivers across the Northeast, but the diminished population is now confined to just a few waterways in Maine. Wild fish are supplemented by fish reared in hatcheries.
Restoring wild salmon runs on the Kennebec River relies on getting adult fish to the best places to lay eggs. And Noll said the Sandy River offers the kind of gravely habitat that's perfect for spawning.
The lift from Waterville to the release point outside Phillips is the last leg of the salmons' treacherous journey from western Maine to the Arctic Circle and back again to the place they were born.
"They've traveled downstream out the Kennebec River up to the coast of west coast of Greenland, and then most of them have returned two years later," Noll said.
And fish raised in the wild tend to be hardier than fish reared in a hatchery, Noll said. So some will survive long enough to get their own truck ride someday.
"Being synced with their environment, and being able to withstand temperature fluctuations, or water chemistry and just being able to forage for food directly out of the gravel, and starting to avoid predators from Day One, those seem to be important even later in their life," she said.
By around 10:30 a.m., Noll pulled off the road to the release site and carefully opened the tank, mindful not to let fish escape.
"They are the leapers, so they will jump out," she said.
Then one by one she slid the salmon into the rubber sleeve, lifted them out of the tank, and swiftly carried them down to the Sandy River. The salmon took a few seconds to get their bearings, than swam off.
The day's trip was done, but the work doesn't stop there. Noll and other biologists monitor the river for new nests throughout the season, to make sure the transported fish are spawning.
Since trap and truck was implemented 20 years ago, it has shuttled more than 800 salmon above the Kennebec dams.
"What we've found is that yes — this program is successful. Salmon are spawning in good quality habitat and they are producing juveniles," Noll said.
Even advocates of this effort acknowledge that trap and truck is inefficient, time consuming and expensive — about $150,000 a year.
But unless and until the Kennebec River dams are removed, it's the only way to ensure this run of endangered Atlantic salmon doesn't disappear forever.
