Session A6 - Methodologies for River Herring Passage Evaluations, Monitoring, and Assessment of Population Restoration Success

Although numerous structures have recently been built to provide upstream and downstream passage of river herring at migratory barriers, few have been quantitatively evaluated for their performance. Basic monitoring of these passage structures by simple visual counts of fish also tends to be relatively qualitative in nature, and often inaccurate. The scale of passage structures for river herring offers many opportunities for comprehensive evaluations and monitoring that are often not feasible with other anadromous fishes. Several technologies have been developed to perform more quantitative evaluations and accurate monitoring of passage structures and river herring runs, ranging from mark-recapture studies, automated video recording, and telemetry; these methods are reviewed and summarized in terms of level of effort, cost, and data return. Newly-developed numeric methods for analyzing data to estimate attraction, spatial/temporal passage performance, and assessment of passage performance relevant to restoration goals are also described