Hudson River Eel Project

Contributed by Sarah Mount, posted 6/30/21: June 6th was the last day of sampling at the last net still fishing from the 2021 Hudson River Eel Project. Students and volunteers sampled at 12 sites from Staten Island to Troy (160 river miles) to monitor the numbers of glass eels arriving from the ocean to better understand this important species in decline. A total of 77,350 eels were caught, counted, and released upstream this year. In the 14 years of this community science monitoring program, volunteers have counted 1,382,926 glass eels. These numbers allow scientists and managers to get baseline data on how eels are doing over time. For more information on this project, visit https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/49580.html.