American Eel Migration Study - 2021 Seasonal Data
Each spring CURB participates in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s American Eel Migration Study. This project tracks migrating glass eels (1-year-old American eels) as they enter the Hudson River Estuary from the Atlantic Ocean. CURB uses a fyke net stationed in our tidal marsh to collect and count these tiny eels. Our sampling season typically runs from late February through late May, for a total of about 14 weeks. This was our 8th year of sampling with the fyke net.
In terms of the data for this season, we counted 1,830 glass eels over 57 days of sampling. This was our second highest seasonal total in our 8 years of sampling. We average close to 1,200 eels per season. In our COVID-19 shortened season of 2020, we totaled 1,485 glass eels. We counted 2,782 eels during our record season of 2019. Still this was a very good year, which continues the trend of high counts during the last 4 seasons. In fact, for our first 4 years of sampling (2014 – 2017) we averaged 638 eels per season. During the 4 most recent seasons (2018 – 2021), we averaged 1,840 eels. This is a great sign for the eel population here in the Hudson River watershed.
The chart above shows our daily eel counts. This season’s counts peaked around the last week of March and first week of April. This was a bit later than the last couple of years, likely due to colder water temperatures early on in the season. Most of our catch occurred from mid-March through mid-April. The table below shows our weekly catch totals.
Lastly, in addition to our glass eel counts we also track any other animals that enter the fyke net. This net is designed to catch only very small animals like glass eels, but we do occasionally get some other species. The table below shows some of our other catches for the season. We had a diverse catch of 11 different types of animals, led by 235 grass shrimp.
We would like to give a special thanks to our team of volunteers who helped to make this a successful season of sampling! For more information about the project and data from our 8 years of sampling, please check out the eel page of our website: