Mystic River Herring Education Project

Natural beauty is not out of reach even in the most urban of spaces. The Mystic River Watershed is the most populated watershed in Massachusetts, with 7% of the MA population living on 1% of its land. Extending from Cambridge north to Arlington and Winchester, the story of the Mystic River is one of extensive industrialization. Decades ago, locals built dams to power mills. These dams interrupt habitat and make it difficult for herring to move upstream. Due to these dams as well as over-fishing, the herring population declined from seventy million in the mid-1950s to two hundred thousand in 2012.