With a few hundred more adult Atlantic salmon swimming up the Penobscot River this year than last, Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery (East Orland, Maine) has been able to meet its goal of spawning three million Penobscot salmon eggs. As part of the ongoing Atlantic salmon restoration program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and volunteers from partnering agencies took eggs from female salmon trapped as they swam up the Penobscot River early last summer. The Veazie Dam's fish trap on the Penobscot captured 1,114 salmon this season, up from 780 last year and the highest count since 1998. More than 600 of the 30-inch, 12 to 15-pound sea-run salmon were brought to the Craig Brook hatchery for artificial spawning, and the rest were allowed to proceed upriver to spawn naturally.

?The Service and its many partners are encouraged by the higher number of adults that returned to the Penobscot this year,? said Carl Burger, manager of the fisheries complex. "But," he noted, ?it's too early to tell whether 2003 numbers are an anomaly or the bellwether of an emerging trend associated with recovery efforts.?

While 1,000-plus salmon may seem impressive, commercial fishermen on the Penobscot harvested ten times that number of salmon annually 125 years ago.

Biologists estimate that, of the approximately three million salmon eggs taken in November, 1.7 million young fish will be raised at Craig Brook. They?ll be released as one-inch fry this spring at several sites along the Penobscot's upper reaches, such as Wassataquoik Stream and Matagamon. An additional 950,000 salmon will be raised at Green Lake National Fish Hatchery in Ellsworth, Maine, and released as larger fall parr or as smolts ready to head to sea in the spring of 2005.

The impressive adult Atlantic salmon spawned this month have thrilled hundreds of students, teachers and families visiting the hatchery for spawning demonstrations. The fish will be returned to the Penobscot in December, and some will survive to reproduce again; this year's return included five repeat spawners.

The Penobscot -- Maine's largest river and New England's second largest -- has the highest Atlantic salmon population of any river in the United States. Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery, part of the federal Maine Fisheries Program Complex, also spawns salmon from six other rivers in Maine that have endangered Atlantic salmon populations: the Sheepscot, Narraguagus, Pleasant, Machias, East Machias and Dennys rivers.

NORTHEAST REGION, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE -- Conserving the Nature of the Northeast