Fish Ladder Park - Dover, New Hampshire - Fish Ladders on Waymarking.com

The New Hampshire Fish and Game department oversees the Cocheco River Wildlife Management Area in Dover, New Hampshire. The site is broken into several, non-contiguous tracts, one of which is Fish Ladder Park at Cocheco Falls in downtown Dover. This 0.1 acre pocket park has a walkway that provides a viewing area of the waterfall and fish ladder.

The N.H. Fish and Game Department operates seven fish ladders in coastal rivers that each Spring help hundreds of thousands of migratory fish ascend over dams into the freshwater above. In order to survive, these migratory fish, such as river herring (alewife and blueback herring) and American shad, must move between saltwater and freshwater to access spawning, nursery and feeding areas as part of their life cycle. N.H. Fish and Game staff monitor the fish ladders daily during the migrations to help fish pass through these fish ladders into the freshwater and to collect biological information to assure the populations are healthy and continuing to flourish.
Source: Foster's Daily Democrat, "Outdoor roundup: Discover Dover’s migrating fish"

Tens of thousands of herring migrate up the Cocheco from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in fresh water annually. This fish ladder, "...which under an agreement with the dam owner, is opened from April 15 through June 30 to allow migratory fish passage upstream to spawn. The ladder, which lets fish navigate past the 26-foot high dam, has a 6:1 slope, with five resting pools interspersed along its length." (Source: Foster's Daily Democrat, "Cocheco River fish species are carefully monitored")