On April 5, 2017 the Mystic River Watershed Association, together with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, installed an underwater video camera at the Upper Mystic Lake dam in Medford.
This effort is part of the new Mystic River Herring Education Project which aims to connect students to the remarkable river herring migration and the science behind it using technology, data gathering, curriculum, and field visits. The Mystic River Watershed Association is partnering with K-12 schools to provide hands-on science surrounding this major wildlife migration, which is largely out of sight and unknown to local residents. Students will perform herring counts, develop critical thinking skills, improve environmental literacy, and participate in stewardship opportunities through both classroom engagement and field trips to the fish ladder.
This project is funded by a US Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Education grant and builds off of the success of the Herring Monitoring Program, in which eighty trained citizen scientists document the herring migration at the Upper Mystic Lake Dam each spring.
A second video camera will be in place at Winchester's Center Falls Dam during the 2018 migration.
