Until recently, a typical herring count at Veterans Memorial Park in Marshfield went something like this: stand at the edge of the river, stare down into the water, hope to see a fish, leave disappointed. Every spring since 2008, NSRWA’s Herring Count volunteers would return to Veterans Memorial Park in Marshfield, week after week from April to June, to repeat what could feel like a fruitless ritual. Very few ever spotted any herring.
It’s hard to feel like you’re helping when you’re reporting a long string of nothing, but we kept going back -- year after year after year. Why? “Zeroes are data,” our science team reminded us. We were working toward something. And if it went as we hoped, the payoff would be grand.
We knew there were herring in the South River. Volunteers would occasionally observe small groups of them gathering below the fish ladder. But at our counting station at the top of the dam, we almost never saw them swimming upstream.
The South River at Veterans Memorial Park, as viewed from the bridge on Main Street.
Dam removals are not simple. Time-of-year restrictions dictate when work can be done, so wildlife migration and reproduction will not be disturbed. Heavy rains and snowfalls cause delays. Plus, the work itself is fairly involved. At Veterans Memorial Park, the construction crew dug a temporary bypass channel in order to allow for fish passage during the migratory season without having to stop work in the river. Next, they diverted the river with temporary coffer dams, dismantled the industrial dam, and replaced it with a series of riffles and pools. These riffles are a nature-based but engineered solution to help fish swim upstream while also maintaining water levels in the lagoon. In addition, the walls of the lagoon were repaired and rebuilt.
Riffles and pools on the South River at Veterans Memorial Park in Marshfield.
The day the dam was dismantled was truly joyous. It was January, and quite cold, but that didn’t stop NSRWA’s staff from taking a field trip. We lined up on the Main Street bridge and watched for an hour as the crew used heavy equipment to break the dam into pieces and carry it away. What a milestone! But a more relevant measure of the project’s worth would be seeing how wildlife would respond. Aside from flood safety, and paying due respect to Marshfield’s Veterans, our primary goals with this project were to improve water quality, restore wildlife habitat, and reopen fish passage to the upstream half of the South River.
NSRWA staff at the South River dam removal!
Even in the absence of activity, herring counts can be meditative, with the soothing sounds of flowing water, the earthy scents of spring, the simple task of scanning the river, ever-hopeful that a fish will swim by. It can also be boring. And it can make you wonder incessantly if you’re doing it wrong.
Last year was more of the same ... until the first week of May, when something spectacular happened. We had been trying to count herring from the Main Street bridge at Veterans Memorial Park, but it was nearly impossible to see through the rushing water in the bypass channel. I almost fell out of my chair when NSRWA’s Watershed Ecologist, Alex Mansfield, posted a video of the river a half mile upstream of the park. It was filled with herring! Hundreds of them! Responding immediately to the dam removal, they had raced through the bypass channel and traveled as far upstream as they could go.
Herring swimming upstream of the dam removal site, May 2025.
Who knows how long herring have been swimming up the South River? Hundreds of years – maybe thousands? The earliest Colonial histories make note of them, and Native American tribes depended on them long before that. We rejoiced again in July when the coffer dams were removed and the South River flowed freely for the first time in nearly 400 years. Another milestone! And then all eyes turned toward Spring 2026. Would our historic herring populations make use of the restored channel?
All through April 2026, I peered down into the river from the bridge. Nothing. May arrived. Still nothing. With the final stages of construction still underway, we could only observe from a distance. Up to ten volunteers per day stopped by the site. We were in a staff meeting when the first positive report came through. I was so excited, I interrupted the conversation to exclaim, “Bob saw seven fish!”
Two days later, it was my turn to count. I’d been gazing into this river, in 10-minute stretches, for close to a decade. I’d seen herring elsewhere, so I knew what to look for. At first, it seemed like the same-old same-old, except every so often, I detected an odd splash. Even with polarized sunglasses, it was hard to see through the water, but then suddenly a cloud shifted, and three slender silvery-purple fish darted across my line of vision! Following them upstream, I saw four more. They were all swimming furiously against the current, navigating the restored river channel! Altogether, I spotted 14 herring. I could hardly believe it.
The author, counting herring at Veterans Memorial Park.
Click here to view video of herring swimming in the South River at Veterans Memorial Park on May 8, 2026.
Herring begin their lives in freshwater streams. A few months after hatching, juveniles make their way downstream to the ocean, where they spend the next few years growing to maturity. When they are ready to spawn, they return to the streams of their birth, swimming for miles against the current. It is an arduous journey. Persistence is required. It’s an incredible thing to witness.
River restoration requires persistence as well. Our landscape has been extremely altered. While we can’t return a river entirely to its former state, we can do our best to restore its ecological function, and hopefully bring back some of the species from centuries past. This begins with restoring and maintaining the river’s most basic function – its flow – and remaining vigilant with our stewardship.
The Veterans Memorial Park project is now in its final phase. A series of cosmetic and access improvements are well underway, with completion expected soon. NSRWA’s South River Restoration project continues as well. Two additional dams – at Chandlers Pond in Marshfield and at Temple Street in Duxbury -- are slated for removal. While we can’t be sure how long those projects will take, we look forward to the day when all of the South River is open again for migratory fish and the wildlife that depend on them!
If you enjoy the outdoors, be sure to check out NSRWA’s Explore South Shore program. Every morning, we highlight one of the region’s best nature places on Facebook and Instagram. Each spring, we highlight public places where to view migrating herring. Not on social media? We’ve listed all the locations on our website as well!
by Kezia Bacon
May 2026
Kezia Bacon's articles appear courtesy of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, a local non-profit organization devoted to protecting our waters. For membership information and a copy of their latest newsletter, contact NSRWA at (781) 659-8168 or visit www.nsrwa.org. You will also find thirty years of Kezia’s Nature columns there. For more information about the “That’s My Watershed!” Contest, visit https://www.nsrwa.org/2026-nsrwa-explore-south-shore-thats-my-watershed-contest-rules/
