Buckeyes returning, but run up stream isn’t easy

By John Howell
Posted 4/21/16

Paul Earnshaw has served as a guardian of Buckeye Brook for decades. He’s forever picking up trash, spearheading efforts to fight the invasive phragmites, and leading up the annual fish count …

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Buckeyes returning, but run up stream isn’t easy

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Paul Earnshaw has served as a guardian of Buckeye Brook for decades. He’s forever picking up trash, spearheading efforts to fight the invasive phragmites, and leading up the annual fish count during the run of blueback herring and alewives.

But this year has him confounded.

“I’m really perplexed,” Earnshaw said Tuesday.

So far this season, volunteer counters have recorded 43 fish crossing the white panel in Buckeye Brook at the Warwick Avenue Bridge. In one session, Earnshaw said, Bill Aldrich counted 40 fish. Earnshaw counted the other three.

What has Earnshaw stumped is that he can see many more fish in the stream. They just aren’t swimming upstream to spawn in Warwick Pond or Spring Green Pond. A visit to the area Tuesday about 4:30 p.m. found an estimated 50 fish circling in a small pool just below the bridge.

Meanwhile, across town, another scene is playing out at the site of the Apponaug Circulator project. The project that removed many vestiges of the Apponaug Mill opened up the Apponaug River, which is made up from the outflow of Gorton Pond and Little Gorton Pond. As part of the project, the river was channeled and its bed and banks embedded with concrete blocks designed to impede erosion while promoting vegetation. The blocks are positioned with holes up.

But “river” is a vastly overstated definition for the Apponaug. The waterway is more of a trickle and no more than eight inches deep along the length of its course of the road project. It’s not an easy passage for herring seeking to spawn in either of the ponds.

Tuesday afternoon, Department of Environmental Management personnel were doing their best to help the fish. Using hand nets, they caught fish, many forced to swim on their sides because the water was so shallow, and carried them to be released upstream.

Linda Steere, of Applied-Bio Systems Inc. of West Kingston and a consultant for the project, estimated between 300 and 400 fish had been caught and transported upstream. She said an effort would be made to raise the river water by diverting flow from Hardig Brook. Also, she was hopeful rain would increase the flow before the end of the fish run.

Viewing the system of cement blocks, she thought fish passage could be enhanced by filling the holes of those blocks lining the riverbed with sand. That is unlikely to happen now with the run in progress. DEM personnel were expecting to return Wednesday to assist.

Steere believes the project is an improvement.

“In the long run, this project is good for the fish and the river,” she said. “We’re just sort of mid-stream [in terms of completing the river work],” she added.

When completed, a shallow pond will be created in wetlands northwest of where Toll Gate Road will enter a roundabout at the intersection with Centerville Road.

When informed of the Apponaug River run, Earnshaw was all that more at a loss for an explanation. He said Buckeye Brook waters were clearer than they were last year. Also, the brook had fish in it, but they weren’t moving. He said fish weren’t seen in the brook north of Warwick Pond at the crossing at Lakeshore Drive. In prior years, the herring congregate there before swimming upstream to Spring Green Pond.

Last year’s fish count, which is arrived at by taking the period counts recorded by volunteers and extrapolating, came up with 15,333 fish. This was down from 47,000 in 2014 and about 90,000 the year before. No conclusive reason has been given for the decline.

In an email, Buckeye Brook Coalition president Michael Zarum focused on what is being viewed as constrictions to the brook.

“A preliminary site assessment confirmed sedimentation and invasive phragmites may be causing flow constrictions east of the airport. There is definitely stream flow, albeit constricted.  Finding sediment and phragmites crossing the stream indicates that a dredge and phragmites removal program is indicated in the area between Warwick Pond and Warwick Avenue,” he writes.

Even so, Zarum doesn’t see a correlation between the stream restrictions and the observation that fish aren’t moving upstream.

Phil Edwards, Freshwater Anadromous Fisheries Biologist with DEM, said with the mild winter some fish were seen as early as February. It slowed with cold weather in March but now with warmer weather it has picked up and was at its peak this week.

“It definitely seems like we’re seeing some good runs,” he said. As for what’s happening in Buckeye Brook, he said fish will sometimes pool, even spawning before they reach the pond. He was been in contact with the coalition and agrees the brook “could be more efficient.”

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  • Justanidiot

    One fish, two fish

    dead fish, blue fish....

    Monday, April 25, 2016 Report this