Monitoring the Health of New Hampshire's Coastal Waters With Help From Rainbow Smelt

Nathan Furey, associate professor in the department of biological sciences, is revealing the rainbow smelt’s secrets in New Hampshire’s Great Bay Estuary and the rivers that drain into it. Using telemetry tags and microchips to track individual fish, he and his team are gathering data on how long they stay in the estuary and river systems, where they go while there and when they head back out to sea. The species’ biology may serve as an effective bellwether for the health of the New England coastal environment.

Establishing a current baseline for rainbow smelt movement and spawning will allow researchers to track any future changes, which is increasingly important as New Hampshire’s coastal waters warm. If those changes are detrimental to smelt populations, the ripple effects could be substantial for the entire marine ecosystem of coastal New Hampshire and beyond.