As part of the program, an educational facility will be created so that students can learn about the organisms in the river, how to monitor them and how to determine what it means when certain fish are there and others are not. Professor Joe Rachlin of Lehman College hopes that this study will bring fishing back to the area, and help create community awareness of the Bronx River. Field-based studies have increased in importance as the idea of restoring aquatic life and examining the effects of that life in the Bronx River have peaked the interest of several professors, students and organizations. One of these projects includes baseline fish monitoring of the Bronx River tidal waters. The project has been deemed as crucial, due to the fact that minimal information exists on the present or historic fishery resources of the Bronx River.
Fish migrate from a marine environment to fresh water.
This hasn t been studied in any way. As part of the program, data will be collected in different species for their seasonal presence, abundance, richness, health, condition, predator-prey interactions and more. We ll find a fisherman, ask how long he has been fishing, what did he catch and so on. This way we can gather information on what the extent of the fishing pressure is on the area. We ll do some statistical work on species identification.