Raritan river fish ladder goes LIVE:

[AndyS]

A big thank you goes out to the Rutgers Marine and Coastal Sciences group doing the study on migrating fish in the Raritan river. A live feed from inside the fish ladder at the Island Farm Fish Weir has been opened to the public to raise awareness about the Raritan river.
A few things about the fish ladder:
The glass is 33 1/2" wide. The viewing room is near the outlet of the 6 chamber fish ladder that has 11" slots. The dam next to the fish ladder is 6 feet tall. The new high resolution camera is on an angle so at night the infrared light does not reflect back off the glass. Infrared was used instead of bright light as to not "spook" the fish, fish can't see infrared. Monitoring of the fish ladder usually starts around late March and goes through mid June, peak migration period. The tapes will be stored and viewed at a later date and all fish will be counted and at what time they passed through the ladder.
There is more information on the website. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.
http://raritanfishcam.weebly.com/

[FASTEDDIE29]

I like it! That looks like a good sized Trout passing through! Saw a lot
of them last year caught and lost due to lack of nets! Now I can see all the fish that I didn't catch! HAHAHAHAHA!!!:D

[Jigman13]

That's awesome.

[FASTEDDIE29]

Wow! Just checked out the live cam. Saw 2 cookie cutter Channels, 1 Shad and a Smallie pass through the ladder. Pretty friggin awesome! Wow!!!

[thmyorke1]

Awesome

[Gerry Zagorski]

Very cool!!!

[AndyS]

I get to review the recorded tapes and think the same thing, damn, look at all the fish I missed !!

[Jigman13]

Just watched for 10 min. Lots of channels and what looked like lampreys

[Heronimo42]

I just watched and saw about $100 worth of lures I lost there. Very cool though.

[JimmyC]

Well I know what I'm gonna be doing at work all day

[njfish4life]

This is one of the coolest things ever!! From what I can see (again I might be identifying the fish incorrectly) there are a ton of shad swimming through. Football shaped body and v-shaped back fin.

[thmyorke1]

This is one of the coolest things ever!! From what I can see (again I might be identifying the fish incorrectly) there are a ton of shad swimming through. Football shaped body and v-shaped back fin.

yep

here's another trout i spotted. Keep your finger on the prnt-screen key!

It doesnt look like a rainbow... they didnt stock browns right? ... BIG NATURALS? :eek:

[Jigman13]

Big ass sea run brown

[AndyS]

Time to pick up your copy of Peterson's Field Guide to American Fishes, I did. Watched on my phone for a bit before work (4/12) and saw bass, lamprey and American Shad. Watched during my lunch break and saw 2 LMB, 2 SMB, a huge lamprey, 3 American Shad and a beautiful walleye all lit up. The American Shad often look "confused", because, well they are. They just came out of a huge river into a washing machine with concrete walls. If they are unlucky they will spend too much time within the ladder, get tired, then get banged up on the concrete walls and the ladder will spit them out, sometimes dead. Apprehensive they are. A strong fish in many senses but fragile in many other ways, they are looking out for their unborn young.
The American Shad have a slender profile and a knife edge black tail, only makes sense to have a tail like a tuna when you have to swim thousands of miles. Gizzard Shad have a deeper body and more bulbous tail.
Keep the photos and reports coming in !! :)

(This ladder is not equipped with a resting pool like some larger ladders)

[AndyS]

I think if you click on wide view you get a bigger image.

[Jigman13]

Shad, lmb, smb, sucker... also saw rock bass, a tank common carp and a walrus walleye. I can watch this all day haha

[AndyS]

Click on the screen and go to wide view if you can. Cool pics of the fish you will NEVER catch !!! Bwahahahaha !!

[thmyorke1]

Anyone see any more trout? Hopefully spot more BIG NATURAL browns

[Billfish715]

For those who are working from their computers at their desks, productivity was just reduced by about 25%. When the first sturgeon swims past, all bets about work output cease.

[thmyorke1]

For those who are working from their computers at their desks, productivity was just reduced by about 25%. When the first sturgeon swims past, all bets about work output cease.

That's cause I'll be driving to Duke island the moment I see a sturgeon confirmed.

Was neat seeing that sea run brown, but dang when was the last time the Raritan had a sturgeon?

[Rich196]

WOW, Very cool, Just watched about 5 cat's working their way through. Thanks for the link.

[Esox Luciano]

That is pretty awesome!! Would love to hook up a live feed at some of my own spots. And yea, so I would know what I'm missing out on, but also depending on placement, you can set it up in a particular structure that recieves frequent action. Would just be a biatch to get it perfect.

[thmyorke1]

@Rich
I didn't see any during the day. Compliments that they really prefer night time.

@esox
I bet the fishing market is going to start churning out $1k fish cams for us to use like hunters. Every channel on YouTube is going to preach and shill it.

[Jigman13]

Just saw a handful of rainbows move through. Water level dropping and seeing fewer fish. Again,this is so cool lol

[AndyS]

This is Jigman after watching fish ladder video for 2 days strait !!

[AndyS]

In May and early June, visitors can view migrating fish on their journey upstream in our underwater viewing windows. Through a partnership between Public Service of NH, NH Audubon Society, the NH Fish and Game Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Fishways has been providing quality education programs for people of all ages for over 15 years.

The Fishways is managed by NH Audubon and is located on the beautiful Merrimack River in Manchester, NH at 4 Fletcher Street, exit 6 off of Interstate 293

[ngeno626]

EPIC!! saw a couple trout and a hand full of shad thus far. The ladder is walking distance from my brothers place but never had much luck there.
Needless to say work production has suffered substantially since Andy posted this

[RutgersResearch]

Thank you Andy for sharing this with the community!

We are very happy to hear that everyone is enjoying this view of the Raritan. The system is solar powered and transmits a video feed over a cellular connection to the internet 24/7. As Andy mentioned earlier, we have an infrared LED spotlight above the water column to allow for night viewing. We've seen a bunch of shad passing through the ladder during the day, and a ton of catfish during the night.

This live streaming system is part of a larger effort by our group to evaluate how well the Island Farm Weir fish ladder is functioning. We'll be out on the river over the next six weeks tagging shad and river herring with PIT tags (small electronic tags that act like EZPASS for fish), and monitoring their movements through the fish ladder.

Let us know if you have any questions about the system; we would be happy to answer them!

-Anthony

[Heronimo42]

Anthony:

I'd like to donate a squeegee to clean the viewing partition. Where should I mail this?

Steve

[thmyorke1]

@RutgersResearch

Thanks for making the feed public, im always interested in reading up on studies and reports on fisheries, especially local.

Will there be any efforts taken after the study? Such as if the ladder proves to be inefficient?

Also it would be interesting for some computer software to automatically take snapshots of fish on screen. Perhaps something that can distinguish the bubbles flowing around versus a fish. That would be loads of data

[RutgersResearch]

Heronimo42: Thank you, but we actually already have some equipment for cleaning the window (in the next few weeks algae will start to grow on the glass). Next time we are down there we'll be sure to clean the window up a bit on both sides!

thmyorke1: You're quite welcome. I certainly hope the study will yield some actionable advice, but we'll have to see what the results show. Our role is largely to evaluate the performance of the fish ladder (using video and tagging data).

Using software is something that we have been exploring, but it seems the technology is not quite there yet to successfully and economically identify fish. As Andy mentioned, we do record all of this footage and review it, manually making counts of all the fish we see and identify them if possible.