2008 Town Brook Herring Run
In 2008 the Environmental Management Division (EMD) undertook as a project the task of establishing a baseline population estimates for the number of river herring migrating upstream at Town Brook. EMD partnered with the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries to complete this project. EMD utilized three different methodologies to establish the population: a video counting system that ran 24 hours a day over the course of 70 days, 3 daily ten minute counts every day for 70 days along with subsequent analysis of the data, and the Smith-Root electronic fish counter. Both the video counting system and the Smith-Root system provided counting coverage 24 hours a days over the entire herring run season.
After analysis of the three counting methodologies, the population of migrating river herring at Town Brook was estimated at 125,840 for this spring.
The population study will be undertaken again in 2009 and 2010 to establish a population estimate for river herring in Town Brook and will be used in the future for gauging the success of restoration projects.
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