The Hudson River used to be among some of the most contaminated rivers in the United States. Following decades of environmental legislation and activism, wildlife including bald eagles, bears, and whales are being spotted in New York in larger numbers. The Hudson is also an important habitat for migratory American eels, who are now getting some help from citizen scientists.
For the first time, this citizen science data will be treated as official data entered in the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) peer-reviewed eel stock assessment report. Since 2008, the Hudson River Eel Project has relied on close to 1,000 citizen scientists donating their time every spring to net, count, and release about two million juvenile American eels.
“What I love about the eel project is it takes another step deeper toward volunteers actually becoming scientists and thinking about research methods and the research questions we’re trying to answer,” Chris Bowser, project leader and Cornell University environmental scientist and educator, said in a statement.
[Related: How eels might hitch a ride to Europe.]
The project has several monitoring sites between Troy south towards New York City. Volunteers count and track the juveniles who are often called glass eels, since they are transparent at this stage of life. Their data helps inform conservation management decisions, since the species is an essential part of the food web.
An eel’s life
American eels hatch about 3,700-miles miles southeast of the Hudson in the salty Sargasso Sea. When they are larvae, the eels are shaped like willow leaves and they migrate north towards the freshwaters of the Caribbean islands, South America, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic coast from Florida to Canada.
To get to New York, the eel larvae catch a ride on the Gulf Stream current. They transform into their translucent 2-inch long glass eel state when they hit the brackish waters…
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