Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge was established in 1997 to conserve, protect and enhance the abundance and diversity of native plant, fish and wildlife species and the ecosystems on which they depend throughout the Connecticut River watershed. The watershed covers large areas of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. It contains a great diversity of habitats, notably: northern forest valuable as nesting habitat for migrant thrushes, warblers and other birds; rivers and streams used by shad, salmon, herring and other migratory fishes; and an internationally significant complex of high-quality
Herring scad shallow coastal regions where it inhabits the surface layers of the ocean over a variety of substrates. The herring scad is a carnivorous species, known to consume a variety of crustaceans including shrimps, copepods and decapods as well as other small fishes. It is one of a number of pelagic fish from the Red Sea found to have high numbers of luminescent bacteria in its gut, living symbiotically with the fish as part of the gut flora. Parasites of the herring scad include the philometrid nematode "Philometra austropacifica", which lives inside the ovary of the females. The species is of