March 1, 2018

You might have noticed a strange orange ball floating underneath the railroad bridge in Wreck Pond the past couple of days. Well, that’s because it’s fish sampling time once again! Earlier in the week we successfully tested our fyke net and now have deployed the orange buoy that signals the start of the 2018 Wreck Pond river herring sampling season. The season for spring sampling will continue through late June and we are hoping to see big numbers of alewife (and hopefully a blueback or two) this year. If you remember, last year we only caught about 50 alewife post-culvert construction, and we thought we might have missed the big run due to rapid changes in weather that occurred prior to our April start. That is why we are out so early this year. We want to see if the herring are coming into the pond when we are having pre-spring warm spells like we have had earlier this week. Like last year, this warm spell will quickly change and older weather will be on the way. One difference this year is the warm spell will be followed by a big Nor’easter.

On the evening of February 27th, the Wreck Pond Sampling team, including local volunteers, set the fyke net up under the rail road bridge located just south of the Shore Road rail road crossing and adjacent to the pump station. The next morning, four fish were caught including one grass carp, two white suckers, and one white perch. Although the evening event yielded no catch, this morning on March 1, 2018 (drum roll please), we caught two healthy adult alewife river herring. All involved were elated and we immediately began to process the fish to ensure survivability. Once weighed and measured, the two individuals (one male and one female) were both safely tagged and released upstream.

This is the earliest the Wreck Pond team has caught river herring in their net. The species is typically observed once water temperatures are between 42 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit but ocean temperatures have been hovering around 40 degrees and we did not anticipate seeing any herring yet. At the time of capture, the temperature in the pond was recorded at 47 degrees Fahrenheit (39 degrees offshore). We will continue to monitor offshore buoy readings but it would appear that the herring can and do come into Wreck Pond when it is a bit colder offshore. One helpful hint regarding their potential presence close to shore are plunging Northern Gannets observed out at sea. Even though these birds are most likely feeding on bunker, it does make us wonder if schools of herring are mixed in as well.

With the upcoming Nor'easter expected to hit tonight through Saturday morning, the team is curious to see if more herring show up in the net pushed by the winds and exceptionally high tides associated with such a storm. We hope to brave the storm and continue sampling through Saturday, but if the orange buoy is gone, that means we either headed for higher ground or we lost our gear. See you after the storm! If you have interest in participating in any future sampling events, please contact Zack Royle, zack@littoralsociety.org