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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 in:
- 2008 was estimated at 125,840 for the spring
- 2009 was estimated at 132,894 for the spring
The population study will be undertaken again in 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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