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June 23, 2008

Bay fish count: Menhaden up, flounder still floundering

JAMESTOWN -- Many fish populations in Narragansett Bay are improving this year, with menhaden showing another big upswing.

But fish such as winter flounder that live on the Bay’s bottom continue to do badly. And the Bay’s temperature continues to warm while its ecology is changing.

Those were some of the biggest conclusions announced in a press conference today at the state’s fisheries laboratory at Fort Wetherill in Jamestown. State and federal scientists used the occasion to thank the state’s congressional delegation for appropriating $916,000 to continue the unusual federal-state-private effort to monitor the health of the Bay.

The so-called Bay Window partnership was initiated in 1997 by the late U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee in response to the North Cape oil spill off Rhode Island in January 1996. See the data online.

-- Journal environmental reporter Peter B. Lord

Posted by Brandie Jefferson  at 1:42 PM | Permalink

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