Anadromous fishes include striped bass, white perch, alewives, blueback herring, and American and hickory shad. Other species include Atlantic sturgeon, shad, alewives, American eel, and others. Chinook and Coho salmon thrived on the alewives and spawned in the lakes' tributaries. In the absence of alewives, walleye and yellow perch reproductive success greatly increased. As this falls is judged impassable to alewives, this species was spawning in the lake. In early European times, alewives and bass were harvested from 1632 onwards. They used horseshoe crabs and "menhadden" (alewives) as a natural fertilizer. In the 1960s, alewives constituted 90% of the biota in these lakes. During the colonial period, alewives were a very important fish used for food and fertilizer. In 2015 Nequasset lake had an estimated run of 300,666 alewives. Plymouth colony created some of the country's earliest fishing regulations to protect the alewives. This imprinted the young alewives with the Concord as their new home river. Alewives have larger eyes, greater body depth, and pearly to white peritoneal linings. "Medomak" is Abenaki for "place (river) of many alewives". The Dead Alewives was an improvisational comedy troupe during the 1980s and 1990s from Milwaukee.