Many New Year celebrations around the world include fireworks and noisemakers brightening a long, cold winter night. For the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal members, a new year begins with a sparkle of silver blue and the flick and splash of thousands of tails as the herring return from the Atlantic Ocean to the local rivers. The river herring (Blueback Herring and Alewife) begin their annual journey around mid-April to spawn in the place they were born. The New Year of the Herring is celebrated by the Wampanoag during the first week in May when the fish in the rivers are plentiful.
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is also known as the People of the First Light. They have inhabited present day Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island for more than 12,000 years. Mashpee Wampanoag were re-acknowledged as a federally recognized tribe in 2007 and now have about 2600 enrolled members. The Wampanoag people include five tribes: Mashpee Wampanoag, Herring Pond, Assawompsett-Nemasket Band of Wampanoags and Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe (Pokonoket).
River herring is an important traditional food source for the Wampanoag and other native people in our area. The harvesting of herring is currently restricted by the state (for conservation purposes), but tribal members are granted aboriginal rights to harvest fish and they continue to teach the next generation about traditional ways. The fast-swimming herring are scooped by hand into big nets. Each year the Mashpee Wampanoag people celebrate their return, and the start of the new year, with tribal celebrations--including herring day.
“We know, being Wampanoag people and next to the rivers, what we look forward to and what it means to us,” said Kitty Hendricks-Miller, Mashpee Wampanoag, at a past Herring Day. “The benefit of Herring Day is that we teach our young people about the migration, traditional ways, and the importance of the estuaries. This life cycle has to keep continuing for our estuaries and our people.”
The fish are served fresh fried or grilled and are also preserved by smoking, corning/salting, or pickling. The herring roe is a delicious delicacy, and the remains of the fish can be used as garden fertilizer; not one bit of this treasure is wasted. No wonder the return of the herring to the rivers each year is a cause for great joy.
Many local bird species also feast on the river herring as they make their yearly migration upstream. Great Blue Herons, Black-crowned Night-herons, Herring Gulls, Cormorants, eagles, Osprey, can be seen gathering at the yearly fish buffet. Plentiful fish makes these lakes, ponds, and rivers choice nesting places for these birds. The native people watched the birds carefully as the first signal that the herring were arriving.
Our local rivers and oceans have not always been treated with care and the river herring suffered a decline in population due to overfishing, trawl-fishing methods, physical obstructions to migration like dams, poor water quality, and inadequate spawning habitat. However, actors across New England are working to protect and monitor herring. After years of advocacy, NOAA has recently adopted amendment 8 to restrict midwater trawling within 20-miles from the coasts. This will reduce the catch of river herring, allowing them to migrate upriver to spawn and be more available for other wildlife to eat.
Today, the Town of Mashpee and the Association to Preserve Cape Cod manage a river herring monitoring program in the Wampanoag area as well, in the Santuit, Mashpee, and Quashnet Rivers. Volunteer monitoring has helped to demonstrate the success of completed restoration efforts along these runs.
In the Greater Boston region, MyRWA is playing an important role in restoring the herring to our watershed. Work to improved fish passage at the Mystic Lakes Dam in 2012 and at the Center Falls Dam in 2018 has resulted in significantly expanded habitat for herring to spawn with more improvements at Horn Pond in Woburn planned for the near future. Since 2012, the number of herring migrating up the Mystic River has grown from 198,000 to 789,000. You can explore the Mystic herring eco-success story here and see the 2021 migrating herring via our underwater fishcam.
May we all cherish these resilient fish by celebrating The New Year of the Herring!
Author: Robin Cohen, MyRWA volunteer herring monitor
