June 16, 2021 — The annual spring river herring census at the city’s West Gloucester fishway is in the books, with 2021 continuing to show low — if slightly improving — numbers of returning fish observed near the end of their spawning journey.
Rebecca Visnick, the Harbormaster’s Office staffer who shepherded the 2021 count, said her cadre of 40 fish counters officially observed 12 river herring, also known as alewives, from April 1 until Memorial Day.
While that pales in comparison to years such as 2017, when counters tabulated 3,300 of the fish making their way up the fishway, it is markedly better than 2020 (five alewives counted) and incrementally better than 2019 (11 alewives counted).
Visnick said the final number also might not reflect the actual number of alewives returning from the Atlantic Ocean — by way of the Little River — to spawn in Lily Pond at the top of the fishway.
“There were other observations (of the alewives) that weren’t part of the official count,” she said. “They were observed below the steep pass ladder and up around the Lily Pond.”