CENTERVILLE – The migration of herring is an annual ritual this time of year. Environmental officials watch the numbers of migrating fish as a gauge of the health of the Cape’s fragile ecosystem.
The town of Barnstable is planning a new program this spring in which it will use volunteers to count the herring in the Centerville River.
Barnstable Department of Natural Resources Officer Amy Croteau is one of the town’s herring wardens. She said DNR officers have been working this winter to clear the town’s herring runs so the fish will have a clear path upstream.
“We’re responsible for maintaining the runs and ensuring that all the herring runs that are active in the town are open enough that the adults can get into the ponds to spawn. So we’re actually walking all of our runs right now and clearing any debris,” Croteau said.
The reason for the counting is to have a base level of herring, so that in the future the town can reopen up the runs by showing the health of the run.
“Because of the moratorium being put in place by Division of Marine Fisheries and because the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has become involved with managing river herrings in order to potentially reopen runs to harvest in the future, you would need to create a sustainable fisheries management plan,” she said.
She will hold an introduction for volunteers who would like to help count the herring on Saturday, March 21, at 1 p.m. at the town of Barnstable Marine and Environmental Affairs Office on Phinney’s Lane in Centerville.
“We’re starting this program with the Centerville River because it’s a relatively active run and without count data we can’t make any judgments on whether the run is doing well, whether it’s doing poorly, whether it can sustain harvest, whether it can’t, all those sorts of things, are dependent on a count program,” she said.
Another herring volunteer session, this one being held by Three Bays Preservation, is scheduled for Saturday, March 14 from 1 to 4 p.m. at Liberty Hall on Main Street in Marstons Mills. Three Bays is focused on the herring run on the Marstons Mills River.
