Be a Fish Monitor

The Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) is looking for volunteers to help them take stock of the number of herring in the river for their new Herring Monitoring Program. The Mystic River supports two species of herring- Alewife Herring and Blueback Herring. Herring live in the Atlantic Ocean and migrate up to the Mystic Lakes in Arlington each spring to lay their eggs.

Before the area was widely settled, it was said you could walk across the river on the backs of the herring because they were so abundant. That is not the case today. The Herring Alliance has stated that some herring runs on the Atlantic have declined by 95% in the past twenty years, mostly due to bycatch from trawlers.

MyRWA is looking for volunteer fish monitors to count herring so they can estimate the run size. Volunteers must attend a two-hour training on March 17 and commit to counting at least once from April 1-June 1 at the Mystic Lake dam.

More information: http://mysticriver.org/herring-monitoring/