Summer Seining Data Summary

CURB’s team of staff and volunteers continues near-daily seines of the Hudson River to monitor various species of fish living along the Yonkers waterfront. Our seining season began back in February and will continue through most of November. We use a 30-foot seine net to collect, count, measure and release fish that are caught from our beach and marsh. Our historical data dates back to 2005.

CURB's summer seines included a mix of public programs, teacher trainings, and staff sampling. The results were positive with a large biodiversity of fish, including several first-time catches for our location. Our overall counts were also very high, with the total catch through September ranking second all-time.  We did a total of 493 hauls of the seine net from February - September. Our average for a full season is about 650 seines, which we should come close to by the end of November.

Above is a graph of all of the species caught so far this seining season. You can see that 3 catches really stand out from the rest: Atlantic silverside (2,216), herring and shad (1,968), and moon jelly (1,526). The herring and shad category includes 1,962 Atlantic menhaden. While we have caught high numbers of Atlantic silversides and moon jellies in past seasons, we usually see much lower counts of Atlantic menhaden. Most of these (1,913) were caught in a 2.5 week stretch from 6/7 – 6/24. It’s unknown why so many menhaden were along our beach in June, but high counts were experienced in other parts of the river as well.

Last month we experienced very large catches of Atlantic silversides and moon jellies. These extreme counts have coincided with high salinity readings. In fact, the salinity has been running high in the 10 – 15 ppt range for most of the summer and early fall, likely in part due to the drought that the area has been experiencing. The lack of rain means less freshwater being added to the river via runoff.

In addition to some of our more common catches, we also hauled in 5 first-time catches for our location. These included spot, emerald shiner, spottail shiner, tautog, and blackcheek tonguefish. The blackcheek tonguefish is a fish that was recently discovered in the Hudson River for the first time.

As for the season as a whole, our overall counts through September are very high. Our total catch of 7,480 is above the September average of 3,635. Historically, October has been the peak month of our seining season.

We are still seeking volunteers for our October and November seines. Please contact Jason Muller at jmuller@sarahlawrence.edu for more information.

Catch data from 2005 - 2022 may be found on the seining page of our website.