A new book celebrates the return of fish to the Penobscot
Reviewed by Carl Little
Special to The Ellsworth American
You know that children’s song “Three Little Fishies” with its chorus, “And they swam swam swam right over the dam”? Were it that easy.
In Peter Taylor’s “From the Mountains to the Sea: The Historic Restoration of the Penobscot River (Islandport Press, softbound, 146 pages, $24.95), dams stand in the way of fish 12 sea-run species to be precise and their survival. The removal or circumvention of said structures lies at the heart of this inspiring account of river restoration.
The book opens with a vision of a pre-dam waterway filled with fish, followed by Penobscot tribal elder Butch Phillips’ account of the history of how the river was used and abused over the centuries to the point where the Sacred Circle of Life was broken. Thanks to the Penobscot River Restoration Trust (PRRT), the rest of the story is, so to speak, all upriver.