How to Use alewife in a Sentence

alewife

noun
  • The smelt have gone, as have the alewives that come in after them.
    — Tom Opre, Outdoor Life, 2 July 2026
  • Dead alewife fish pile up on Lake Michigan shores in rare die-off.
    — Laura L. Davis, USA TODAY, 23 June 2022
  • But dams and other changes to the land cut the fish off from many lakes, which became alewife-free.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 31 Mar. 2011
  • The alewife crash started around 2003, but few noticed it at first.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • Large numbers of huge anadromous brown trout move inshore each spring to feed on spawning smelt and alewives.
    — Tom Opre, Outdoor Life, 2 July 2026
  • Crum’s explorations of blue catfish stomachs turned up all kinds of fish, from alewife to yellow perch, and even a wood duck.
    — Dan Rodricks, Baltimore Sun, 1 Aug. 2024
  • Lake Michigan became overwhelmed with the small, silvery alewife.
    — Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 16 Oct. 2022
  • Among the species identified as the most likely invaders were the alewife, zebra mussel and red swamp crayfish.
    — Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY, 11 Jan. 2024
  • The small fish such as alewife and rainbow smelt are also subject to predation by predator fish such as chinook salmon and lake trout.
    — Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 8 Apr. 2023
  • That allowed another invader, the alewife, to soar in numbers.
    — Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 May 2022
  • The alewife is a member of the herring family native to the Atlantic Ocean.
    — Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 8 June 2022
  • But even in Middle America, gizzard shad and alewife movements get the channel cats charged up.
    — Joe Cermele, Outdoor Life, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Hutchinson and his colleagues were able to watch this kind of change in Connecticut lakes thanks to the comings and goings of a fish called the alewife.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 31 Mar. 2011
  • That restoration effort sputtered for decades — until the alewife population started to fade.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • At opposite ends of a block on Flatbush Avenue, a sea turtle and an alewife herring are trying to hail a taxi.
    — Henry Alford, The New Yorker, 20 Nov. 2021
  • The Council got back to work and a bill amending an act regulating the shad and alewife fisheries was passed that day, Philips wrote.
    — Martin Finucane, BostonGlobe.com, 23 Aug. 2023
  • Then alewives, sea lampreys, Eurasian watermilfoil and others all were introduced into the lake and made their mark.
    — Caitlin Looby, Journal Sentinel, 2 May 2024
  • Without lake trout to feed on the alewife—a small river herring—the invasive fish’s population exploded throughout the lakes.
    — Jason Treat, Magazine, 17 Nov. 2020
  • Negative public attention – like images of rotting alewife carcasses on a beach – can also affect how people feel about an area.
    — Caitlin Looby, Journal Sentinel, 12 Sep. 2024
  • The protection order worked as expected; alewife numbers rebounded.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • Billions of the alewives, a small silvery invasive fish, died that summer and awoke citizens to the fact that something was wrong with the region’s greatest natural resource.
    — Theodore J. Karamanski, Chicago Tribune, 6 Feb. 2026
  • But When the alewife population collapsed, native walleye started reproducing in the wild.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • Forward-looking fisheries scientists decided to try stocking non-native salmon and trout in the lake to help reduce the over-abundant alewife population.
    — Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 16 Oct. 2022
  • The Lake Michigan salmon and trout fishery is dominated by non-native species introduced in the 1960s to help reduce the number of alewife, a small invasive fish that died by the millions and fouled beaches.
    — Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 28 Nov. 2021
  • The Erie Canal and its adjacent feeder rivers and reservoirs likely enabled two voracious nonnative species, the Atlantic sea lamprey and alewife, to enter the Great Lakes ecosystem.
    — Christine Keiner, The Conversation, 15 Oct. 2025
  • Tracing their origins is tricky, but historical, ecological and genetic data suggest that sea lampreys and alewives entered Lake Ontario via the Erie Canal during the 1860s.
    — Christine Keiner, The Conversation, 15 Oct. 2025
  • In the 1960s, biologists audaciously began stocking the Great Lakes with Pacific salmon to destroy an Atlantic alewife infestation — and build a multibillion-dollar recreational fishery.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'alewife.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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