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Become a Member
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Please join us.
You may sign up for an annual fee of $35
by going to our website.
Checks may be written to Friends of Cape Cod National Seashore/
Friends of Herring River Account.
P.O. Box 496
Wellfleet, MA 02667
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Upcoming Truro Stakeholders Event
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Friends of Herring River, in concert with the Truro Board of Selectmen, will be scheduling a public meeting as well as a marsh walk in early June. These events are designed as a forum to answer questions that Truro residents may have about the restoration process and any changes that may occur with the planned tidal restoration. Dates and times will be announced shortly.
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How to Identify our Herring Species
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Jo Ann Muramoto, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, alerted us to an excellent chart from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries that shows the differences between the primary two herring species, the Alewife and the Blueback, that you might see during the April/May Herring Run.
Click here for a link to the chart.
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Our Herring
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Thanks to John Duane, herring count volunteer, for the picture in the masthead this month.
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EELS & ELVERS
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Jeff Hughes, Wellfleet Herring Warden, points us to an excellent paper from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with new findings on eels and elvers that you might also expect to see in our river.
Click here..
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Welcome!
Let's get on the water! Sign up soon for....
"Kayaking Exploration of the Herring River". Choose to join us on
Wednesday May 13 9 - 10.30 am or
Wednesday May 20 1 - 2.30 pm
Kayak a Wellfleet portion of the largest salt marsh restoration in New England, the Herring River in Wellfleet and Truro. We will traverse the transition from fresh water at High Toss Bridge to salt marsh habitat at the Chequesset Neck Dike. This trip, beautiful in its own right, will help you understand the changes you can expect from the restoration.
The program is co-sponsored by the Mass Audubon Society at Wellfleet Bay. For registration and more details, please call Audubon at 508-349-2615. For Audubon members the fee is $15, for non-members $20. Bring your own kayak and the fees are reduced to $ 5 (members) and $10 (non-members). Click here for more information.
Contact: Lisbeth Wiley Chapman, editor beth@friendsofherringriver.org
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Questions & Answers -
Send your questions to info@friendsofherringriver.org
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Q: Can Wellfleet's shell fishing industry expect positive benefits from improving the Herring River flow? LWC, Wellfleet
A: The improved flow will increase the water salinity on both sides of the dike. This will improve the breeding grounds of shellfish as well as other fish and wildlife. Larger numbers of naturally occurring shelfish (oysters and clams) will again have a healthy growing area. Because the flow can be controlled, improvements can be evaluated, planned and structured as needed to bring about these positive results. All of this will contribute significantly to the health of our recreational and commercial shellfishing, making more of Wellfleet's finest available.
John Connors, Wellfleet Shellfisherman and
Friends of Herring River Board Member
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Brush Burn Successfully Clears
Portion of Herring River
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Nearly 30 volunteers converged on the Herring River near Bound Brook Island Road March 20 for the purpose of clearing and burning brush adjacent to the river. Though cancelled twice, the third day was perfect for the project.
"Burns are how we get rid of woody, upland vegetation that grows next to the river. When winter storms break limbs and they fall into the river, they create a sieve-like dam that blocks returning herring," says Jeff Hughes, Wellfleet Herring Warden. Thanks to Hughes, Dave Crary, Jr., Fire Management Officer, Cape Cod National Seashore, and his workers, Alex Soper of AmeriCorps and his workers, and Harwich High School Science Teacher Bob Byrnes and 16 students, significant invasive vegetation on the north and south side of the river was cut and burned.
For more information and photos, click here.
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Pre-Restoration Herring Count Underway |
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In March, fifteen intrepid volunteers recruited by Friends of Herring River met in 30 degree weather for on-site training at the Herring River, near Herring Pond, in Wellfleet. Jo Ann Muramoto, Ph.D., Massachusetts Bays Program Regional Coordinator for Cape Cod, Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC) was the trainer and is the scientist who will analyze all of the data accumulated by the volunteers.
"It is vital to get a pre-restoration count on herring, and in fact, vital because the herring population is known to be under pressure," Muramoto says. Every volunteer received a thermometer and a counter, together with a grid to collect date, time, number of Herring, water temperature and other things noticed. Volunteers are counting at the same spot West of Herring Pond and covering several times of day for six days of the week. "Even zero is important statistically," says Muramoto, which was important information for the counters who didn't see fish until the week of April 16. For more information and photos click here.
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Benefits of Tidal Restoration
for the Herring River Estuary
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by John Portnoy
Some of the most productive and biologically diverse habitats on this planet occur along edges - interfaces between forests and shrublands, woods and grasslands, and between the land and the sea. Salt-marsh estuaries are an outstanding example of this, with higher productivity (in terms of organic matter produced per unit space and time) than nearly all Earth's ecosystems.
Although the extreme stresses of salt, soil waterlogging, winter ice damage, etc. limit vascular plants to only a few hardy grasses, their ability to convert solar energy to organic matter is prodigious, and supports a huge diversity of other living things. These are the organisms, from bacteria, phytoplankton and zooplankton to clams, finfish and birds, which have evolved lifestyles to exploit the abundant store of energy captured by the tidal marshes. To download a copy of the paper, click here and scroll to this news article on the home page.
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APCC Takes Strong Role in Herring River Restoration Process
Margo Fenn named leader of project coordinator team to assist in development of EIS/EIR. |
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The Herring River Restoration Committee (HRRC), has contracted with the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC) to perform the services of Project Coordinator to assist with development of an Environmental Impact Statement/Report (EIS/EIR) for the Herring River Restoration Project ("the Project") in Wellfleet and Truro, Massachusetts. The HRRC is a partnership of the Cape Cod National Seashore, Towns of Wellfleet and Truro, Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management.
Click here for more on APCC's involvement in the restoration and on Margo Fenn, the newly appointed leader of the Project Coordinator team.
For more information and pics, click here.
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