Teatown Hosts Sample Site for DEC Community-Research Initiative

By this point in these juvenile American eel’s lives, they have already migrated over 1,500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to reach this sample site in Furnace Brook in Cortlandt.

Teatown is coordinating volunteers for this sample site as a part of NYS Department of Environmental Conservation’s initiative to further understand this mysterious fish.

The species is an important part of our ecosystem, but is in decline in over much of its range. In order to better understand the american eel and inform decision-making, sampling sites have been organized by the NYS DEC to count and weigh them each day at low tide. This is a large undertaking requiring the cooperation of many volunteer “citizen scientists.”