Hudson River Seining Season Preview

Last month marked the start of CURB’s Hudson River seining season. Seining is a method of sampling for fish using a seine net. The fish are counted, measured, and released back to the river, with water quality data also collected.

Since our season is off to a slow start, we thought this would be a good time to look back at our historic seining data. Over our nearly 2 decades of seining, we have sampled close to 70 different species of fish, shrimp, crabs, and jellyfish. The last few years in particular have brought many new catches to our net, including the channel catfish, tautog, pumpkinseed, smallmouth flounder, blackcheek tonguefish, lyre goby and spot.

See below for a graph of all of our catches since 2005.

In addition to these new fish species, we are still seeing high numbers of some of our more regular catches such as Atlantic silversides, striped bass, and mummichogs. Below is a chart of our top 10 catches since 2005.

Moon jelies in particular have seen a large surge in numbers in recent years:

The tables below show the 3-year averages of all of our species caught. This data can be used to follow the trends over time for each of these animals. Some species that have seen noticeable increases over time include Atlantic silversides, mummichogs, herring, and comb jellies. Species with declines in numbers include Atlantic tomcods, flounder, hogchokers, and northern pipefish.

Our overall seasonal catch totals have shown increases, especially during the last 10 years. The table below shows our average catch per unit effort (catch per seine) for each season.

CURB accepts volunteers throughout the year with our seining research. For more information please contact Jason Muller at jmuller@sarahlawrence.edu.