HW/RW volunteers and guests gathered together in November to celebrate the conclusion of another successful monitoring year. Tom Getlin-Jones, a student volunteer from Wilton High School, gave a presentation on the monitoring of local estuarine benthic fisheries that he and other Wilton High School students have been doing with the HW/RW Program. Tom presented fish catch data that was collected for two summers and compared those figures with those obtained in the early 90’s. The data points to a dramatic drop in juvenile winter flounder, a commercially important Long Island Sound species. Other bottom dwelling fin fish also seem to be on the decline. The reasons for these trends in fish populations are still unclear, but climatic changes, increased pressure by predators, toxic chemicals, and low dissolved oxygen in the harbor areas may all be contributors to the problem.

Dick Harris gave a year-end perspective of the many projects undertaken by HW/RW. Highlights included the monitoring of the Norwalk River Watershed and Steep Brook, the Sasco Brook Watershed, the Aspetuck River, the Silvermine River, Indian River, and Cooper Brook. Also included in the talk was the dissolved oxygen monitoring in the Saugatuck, Norwalk, and Five Mile River Harbors. The data base continues to show improvements to dissolved oxygen in the Norwalk River Harbor, thanks mainly to upgrades to Norwalk’s wastewater treatment plant.

Special recognition awards were given to Joe Racz, Dave Perman, Dick Auber, Frank Rubino, and Dawn Ventre.