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After centuries of disturbance, environmental professionals now recognize the need to restore coastal watersheds for native fish and protect the larger ecosystems on which fish and other aquatic biota depend. Anadromous fish species are an important component of coastal ecosystems that are often adversely affected by human activities. Restoring native anadromous fish species is a common focus of both fish and coastal watershed restoration. Yet restoration efforts have met with uneven success, often due to lack of knowledge about habitat availability and use. Using habitat surveys and radio tracking of adult anadromous alewives Alosa pseudoharengus during their spring spawning migration, we illustrate a method for quantifying habitat using multiple approaches and for relating mobile fish distribution to habitat. In the Ipswich River, Massachusetts, measuring habitat units and physical conditions at transects (width, depth, and velocity) provided an ecological basis for the interpretation of landsc...

Capturing adult anadromous fish that are ready to spawn from a self sustaining population and transferring them into a depleted system is a common fisheries enhancement tool. The behaviour of these transplanted fish, however, has not been fully evaluated. The movements of stocked and native anadromous alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus (Wilson), were monitored in the Ipswich River, Massachusetts, USA, to provide a scientific basis for this management tool. Radiotelemetry was used to examine the effect of origin (native or stocked) and release location (upstream or downstream) on distribution and movement during the spawning migration. Native fish remained in the river longer than stocked fish regardless of release location. Release location and origin influenced where fish spent time and how they moved. The spatial mosaic of available habitats and the entire trajectory of freshwater movements should be considered to restore effectively spawners that traverse tens of kilometres within coastal rivers.

Successful conservation depends on a scientifically literate public. We developed the Adopt-A-Herring program to educate nonscientists about fisheries and watershed restoration. This interactive educational and outreach project encouraged coastal residents to be involved in local watershed restoration. In the northeastern United States, river herring (Alosa spp.) are an important component of many coastal watersheds and often are the object of conservation efforts. In order to understand river herring spawning behavior and to improve the effectiveness of restoration efforts, our research tracked these fish via radiotelemetry in the lpswich River, Massachusetts. In our Adopt-A-Herring Program, participating stakeholder organizations adopted and named individual tagged river herring and followed their movements online. We also made information available to our adopters on our larger research goals, the mission and activities of other research and management agencies, examples of human actions that ...

Telemetry has allowed researchers to document the upstream migrations of anadromous fish in freshwater. In many anadromous alosine telemetry studies, researchers use downstream movements (“fallback”) as a behavioral field bioassay for adverse tag effects. However, these downstream movements have not been uniformly reported or interpreted. We quantified movement trajectories of radio-tagged anadromous alewives (Alosa pseudoharengus) in the Ipswich River, Massachusetts (USA) and tested blood chemistry of tagged and untagged fish held 24 h. A diverse repertoire of movements was observed, which could be quantified using (a) direction of initial movements, (b) timing, and (c) characteristics of bouts of coupled upstream and downstream movements (e.g., direction, distance, duration, and speed). Because downstream movements of individual fish were almost always made in combination with upstream movements, these should be examined together. Several of the movement patterns described here could fall under the traditional definition of “fallback” but were not necessarily aberrant. Because superficially similar movements could have quite different interpretations, post-tagging trajectories need more precise definitions. The set of metrics we propose here will help quantify tag effects in the field, and provide the basis for a conceptual framework that helps define the complicated behaviors seen in telemetry studies on alewives and other fish in the field.