Terrible, Terrible Numbers ~ On The Lighter Side

The counts continue to be mostly zeros with just 41 fish counted to-date at Mill Pond Station - that's about 1/4 herring for each of the 153 counts.

Below shows the counts for the first 17 days of the run for all of the years we have counted:

• 2011 -      41
• 2010 -    298
• 2009 - 1,255
• 2008 - 4,574
• 2007 - 1,558
• 2006 -    453

So, Do We Just Keep Counting?
In most prior years we had a second wave of migration which started at about this time and may have been blueback herring [it's almost impossible to tell alewives from bluebacks]. We'll wait a few more days and if there's no uptick, we'll stop counting for the year.

I know how frustrating it's been for everyone to go down to count and bring back zero after zero, but the truly important thing is we know exactly how bad things have been, which is valuable information in itself.

Honorary Herring
At  River Day last Sunday, Abigail Franklin of the Cape Cod Conservation District was working with young kids teaching them about herring and having them make eyes and fins to wear. Below are Rebecca and Sabrina who are shown ready to swim up the ladder.

Since we've had so few fish to count, we designated them as "Honorary Herring" and I removed two real herring from our count sheet and replaced them with these two. Now, if they would only tell us where all their friends were...

Herring Gulls
I've written before about how these gulls hang out at the Mill Pond waiting for a herring to pass by just a little too slowly. When I told folks that I've seen the gulls swallow a herring whole in one gulp, all I got was a look of disbelief.

I've always wanted to catch them doing just that with my video camera and have tried several times to no avail, but for all of you non-believers out there, watch this! And the old timer at the end of this one is calmer then most would be [I get ticked when I get one or two...].

And one of new counters this year, Annette, sent this clip of herring at a pool near Middle Pond [you can supply your own audio].

So Where Are The Herring?
Not in Marstons Mills - that's for sure! Bycatch gets a lot of blame [our river herring that get caught while fishing for something else] and there's very little data on how much of this goes on.

I've started a dialogue with several groups more knowledgeable in this subject then I and while I'm sure they'll have no definitive answer, I'm hoping to be able to provide some likely possibilities. For those who wish to learn more, we'll provide links to relevant information when we find them.

And we'll also work to get more details on the results from other nearby runs.