Alewife (or kyack). In Atlantic Canada it is known as the gaspereau, from the Acadian French word "gasparot", first mentioned by Nicolas Denys. William Francis Ganong, New Brunswick biologist and historian, wrote: Gaspereau, or Gasparot. Name of a common salt-water fish of Acadia (also called alewife), first used, so far as I can find, by Denys in 1672. Nowhere can I find any clue to its origin. It seems not to be Indian. Acadians named two rivers after the fish, the Gaspereau River in Nova Scotia and the Gaspereaux River in New Brunswick. In eastern Massachusetts, Alewife Brook flows through Arlington,
Alewife essentially wiped out around the same time by overfishing and the invasion of the sea lamprey). For a time, alewives, which often exhibit seasonal die-offs, washed up in windrows on the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Various species of Pacific salmon (first coho, and later the Chinook salmon) were introduced as predators. Though marginally successful, this led to the development of a salmon/alewife fishery popular with many sport anglers In spite of such biological control methods, alewives remain implicated in the decline of many native Great Lakes species. It is also a common predator of numerous native and non-native zooplankton