Depends Upon How You Look At It...

While my last post lamented over the sudden drop-off in counts, there is a bright side to the numbers!

If you click on the "schedules and counts" link at the right, then on the "MillPond.YearToYear" tab, you'll see that the 2009 "Run Cumulative Count" for day 19 [the last completely counted day as of this writing] was 1,288 Herring.

Compared to 2008 [4,577], that's not very good - a drop of 3,289 Herring counted, or -72%. BUT, compared to 2006 [481] it's a increase of 807 Herring counted or +167% - and that's great news!

Why? Because the Herring returning in 2009 have nothing to do with the Herring that were here in 2008 and 2007. Herring are at least 3 years old before they reach maturity and return to spawn, meaning that the Herring in the 2009 migration are the offspring of those in the 2006 migration.

Granted, some of those returning in 2009 may be 4 years old [and older], but almost all of my research puts the return at 3 years of age. So, we should be pleased that the 2006 offspring are returning in significantly higher numbers!

Separately, we're monitoring the counts very closely now, as we'll try to end the counting as soon as it looks like the migration is over, so as to not waste our counter's time.

But a look at 2006 shows 2 surges after some very low counts. And, perhaps we stopped just a little too soon in 2008.

We know that many of our counters are ringing in zeros right now, but if we didn't count them, we wouldn't know they were zero - and knowing it's zero is equally as important as knowing it was, say 100.