Smithsonian biologists are on a mission to bring back the imperiled river herring. River herring were once one of the most abundant fish in the Chesapeake. But in the 1970s, their numbers plummeted. By 2012, all states along the Eastern seaboard made harvesting the herring in their rivers illegal to keep them from disappearing.
River herring spend most of their lives in the open ocean, but every spring they migrate upriver to spawn—and today many dams and roads block their way. By using underwater cameras, biologists of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center are getting a more accurate count of their numbers, paving the way for managers figure out how to conserve them.
Footage: River Herring spawning run in Gunpowder River, taken with GoPro. Credit: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
