Alosa served as the focal point of John McPhee's book "The Founding Fish". The roe, or more properly the entire engorged uterus of the American shad—filled with ripening eggs, sautéed in clarified butter and garnished with parsley and a slice of lemon—is considered a great delicacy, and commands high prices when available. Alosa Alosa is a genus of fish, the river herrings, in the family Clupeidae. Along with other genera in the subfamily Alosinae, they are generally known as shads. They are distinct from other herrings by having a deeper body and spawning in rivers. Several species can be found on
Weymouth Back River Whitman's Pond was dammed to turn the machines which processed the natural bog iron for the Weymouth Iron Works. Later, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts installed a herring ladder to allow the herring to bypass the dam on their spawning runs. Historically the herring ran to Whitman's Pond, and beyond up Mill River and Swamp River, to Great Pond. River herring commonly refers to two species, Blueback herring ("Alosa aestivalis") and alewife ("(Alosa pseudoharengus)"). Today, 1/2 million river herring and Rainbow smelt ("Osmerus mordax") run up the river each year to spawn (although they are not able to ascend the fish