Skip to Content

A Look Back at the Data: September Historical Seining Results

Pictured above - A northern kingfish caught during one of our seining programs.

As CURB’s seining season continues to be on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we take our monthly look back at our historical seining data. This summary will be focused on September data that was collected from 2005 – 2019.

Catch by Month

With the transition from summer to fall, our seining catches continue to increase. From the chart above you can see that we are nearing the peak of the season with an average catch per program of nearly 83 fish and other marine species. One might think that numbers would begin to decline as cooler fall weather moves in, but there is a lag with water temperatures. While daytime highs fall into the 60’s and 70’s, it takes a longer time for the water to begin to cool, which keeps our fish counts at higher rates. September air temperatures are similar to what we see in May and June, but those months have lower fish counts because water temperatures are much cooler as they slowly recover from the winter cold.

September Catch

In terms of what we usually catch during the month of September, 2 species clearly stand out. These are Atlantic silversides with 3,150 caught from 2005 – 2019 and moon jellies with 3,041 caught. In addition to these, other high catches include blue crabs at 1,719, comb jellies at 1,620, shrimp at 1,439, mummichogs at 540, and striped bass at 501. In total, we have caught and released 32 different species during the month of September.

Percent of Catch

Our September catch makes up about 18% of our total catch for the season. Some species with high percentages of their total catch occurring this month include (minimum of 20 caught) comb jellies at 31.0%, naked gobies at 30.4%, moon jellies at 27.1%, Atlantic silversides at 24.7%, and mummichogs at 22.2%.

Catch by Year

The chart above shows the trends in our September catches over the last 15 years. Counts have been on a steady increase, especially over the last 4 years. We’ll see if that trend continues into October when we check out the data next month.

For a full look at our fish counts, please check out the seining page of our website.