School of juvenile American shad in the upper James River. Photo taken by Michael Odom in August 2002.

In 2007, Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery produced and stocked 1.2 million marked American shad fry as part of a cooperative interagency project to restore this commercially and recreationally important fishery species to the James River.  All of the released fish carry a permanent tetracycline mark on their ear bones that discern them from wild fish, which will allow biologists to determine the success of the hatchery program.  The fish were stocked in the upper James River and its tributary, the Appomattox River. 

The migratory American shad, historically the dominant commercial fishery in the Chesapeake Bay and a valuable recreational species, has declined drastically due in part to the loss of hundreds of miles of spawning/nursery habitat by dam construction.  In Virginia, the majority of American shad habitat lost from dam construction occurred in the James River and its tributaries.  Providing fish passage at dams and reintroducing young fish to imprint on the historic habitat are key solutions to restoring the species.  The imprinted shad return as adults to spawn 3-5 years after stocking, and have the instinct to return to the upper river where they were originally stocked.

On the James River, a series of five dams in the Richmond area used to exclude American shad from accessing at least 170 miles of former spawning/nursery habitat.  By 1998, fish passage was achieved at all five dams, providing American shad and other migratory species with unrestricted access to their historic habitat.  However, the remnant American shad stock in the James River was very low and none of the returning adult fish were imprinted to spawn in the habitat above the dams.  To accelerate the recolonization of the upper river and stock recovery, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Commonwealth of Virginia began stocking marked larval American shad above the dams in the early 1990s.  For this stocking program, eggs are taken from adult shad captured in the Pamunkey River (in the adjacent York River drainage), and transferred to Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery and a state hatchery for rearing.  The hatched fry are marked with tetracycline and then stocked into the upper James River and its tributaries.  The young shad spend their first summer of life in nursery habitat in the upper rivers, and then migrate to the ocean the following fall.  An estimated 3,629 of the fish stocked by Harrison Lake NFH this year should return as adults to spawn in future years.