Counting To Cease May 17

The daily counts are down to a trickle and there's little sense in counting any longer, so we'll stop at the end of the day Saturday May 17.

Many thanks to all that have helped in the program this year and it's gone very smoothly - a credit to all of you that did the work!

I'll be sending a newsletter out recapping what's transpired and if I've communicated to you via email in the past then you'll receive it automatically.

If you'd like to get on the email list for the newsletter go here, then click on the link beneath Herring Counting Project, complete the form and put "newsletter only" in the comments section.

I'll post the final projections here as soon as I receive them back from the state [in about a month or so] but the regular postings on this blog are just about done for the year.

See you in March 2009!

Winding down...

Volume is really trailing off now and we'll perhaps stop counting the end of this week or there abouts.

Up And Down Counts

Volumes are up and down on a day-to-day basis.

At Mill Pond there was a spike on Wednesday May 7 of at least 215 counted [a couple of counts not yet posted] and then a big drop-off the next day down to at least 78 [also a couple of counts not yet posted].

It hard to see a trend here - it always is when you look too closely...

They're B-a-c-k!

An ad-hoc count taken at Mill Pond Station today at 4pm yielded 61 herring in 10 minutes, which is three times the median count taken for this time of day through the first 18 Days of the Run.

And although some counts haven't yet been posted, 61 almost matches the total that was counted for all of the times we counted in the last 7 days.

So, we'll be counting for a while longer...

Huge Drop-Off In Volume

Things seem to have came to a screeching halt on Sunday, April 27th.

If you look at the spreadsheet with the numbers for the run [the link at the right at 'Monitor the progress of the run'], you'll see that the counts at Mill Pond Station dropped from 100's a day to almost none, and then with a small pickup in volume a couple of days later.

This could be due heavy rainfall and cool temps we've had. I've been looking at historical patterns on these points to see if there is any correlation to that and this year volumes and in prior years as well. If you're interested, the site Weather Underground maintains some very detailed statistics - see Cape Cod Airfield's numbers.

I've also done some work on the velocity of the water traveling through the pipe under Route 28. The students at Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School did some work on this last year and the concern is that this could be an impediment to the migration. This velocity increases significantly during periods of heavy precipitation.

We'll see what the next few days tell us...