Dr. Karen Wilson will provide an opportunity to learn more about alewives, its population and migration, and its interactions with other species in the Gulf of Maine at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 4, via Zoom, according to a news release from the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust in Bath.

To register for the free webinar, visit kennebecestuary.org/upcoming-events/2020alewife-webinar or the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust Facebook page.

Wilson is an associate research faculty with University of Southern Maine’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy. She is working on a project to study juvenile river herring and their habitat in the Penobscot and has studied how alewives create economic and ecologic connections between Maine’s lakes and rivers and the Gulf of Maine.

Each year since 2012, land trust volunteers have counted fish at the Nequasset Fish Ladder during the annual alewife run. Volunteers sign-up for two hour shifts between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., and the results are then used to estimate the total number of fish that travel to Nequasset Lake each year. It takes most alewives about four years to grow to adults and then return to the lake to spawn. The results from these volunteer efforts are evidence of that four-year cycle in the fish count numbers.

For more information, visit kennebecestuary.org or call 207-442-8400.