October 11, 2019 Mystic River Watershed 20191011

October 11, 2019 Mystic River Watershed
Andrew Hrycyna will speak on the Mystic River watershed and its amazing urban ecological restoration story. Each year more than 700,000 river herring migrate from the Atlantic to the Mystic River to spawn in freshwater. For 8 years, the Mystic River Watershed Association (MRWA) has been documenting the population, in coordination with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), using trained citizen volunteers who count the fish at a fish ladder in Upper Mystic Lake. The data show a remarkable tripling in the population after the building of the fish ladder. Andy will give a tour of this data, discuss the parallel data acquired from a video monitoring system now in its third year, and talk about the prospects of increasing the population of river herring even further by creating access to spawning habitat in Horn Pond in Woburn.



Andy Hrycyna is a watershed scientist at MRWA. Andy has worked closely on this project for 5 years, and also runs the water quality monitoring programs on the Mystic River. Andy came to MRWA after earning a master's in Sustainability and Environmental Management from Harvard Extension School.