Tues., 4/6 at 7:00 pm –Please join us for a VIRTUAL event
Our guest Brad Chase, a senior marine fisheries biologist with the Mass Division of Marine Fisheries, will discuss “The Herring are Running: Migratory Fish Restoration in Massachusetts.” For decades, Brad has closely monitored river herring, American eels and rainbow smelt in our rivers & streams. A consummate data collector and river watcher, he’ll recount how populations of these sea-run fish are responding to a number of management and restoration techniques.
“The age-old cry ‘the herring are running!’ is all about how, as early as late March, millions of silvery alewives and bluebacks, collectively known as river herring, begin migrating from ocean depths to their coastal river, instinct pushing them upstream to the very pond they were born in, to spawn and raise young, before they return to sea late summer. ‘It is an unending source of pleasure to watch them on their upward course,” a Cape Codder wrote in 1918.’ But even by then, the upriver migration was badly blocked — by dams. Massachusetts today has over 3,000 dams, one of the earliest erected on Plymouth’s Town Brook in 1636 and most of the rest built in the 1800s and 1900s for powering riverside mills. Relief for the fish came in 2006, when the state prohibited the harvest of river herring, and since then dam removals, new and repaired fish ladders, and other restoration efforts are further helping migratory fish to bounce back — in some rivers, from a trickle to a torrent.” –The Boston Globe 4/27/2020
Register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NQKvqxGTTsOpQ9rIhMKVng
This Zoom presentation is made possible through a partnership with New Bedford Whaling Museum.
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