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
Columbia River supports several species of anadromous fish that migrate between the Pacific Ocean and fresh water tributaries of the river. Sockeye salmon, Coho and Chinook (also known as "king") salmon, and steelhead, all of the genus "Oncorhynchus", are ocean fish that migrate up the rivers at the end of their life cycles to spawn. White sturgeon, which take 15 to 25 years to mature, typically migrate between the ocean and the upstream habitat several times during their lives. Salmon populations declined dramatically after the establishment of canneries in 1867. In 1879 it was reported that 545,450 salmon, with an average weight