These data are a compilation of fishway structures collected by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission state representatives at the request of the U.S. Geological Survey. The variables included within this dataset range from locality information and structure metadata (eg. latitude/longitude and year of construction) to metrics specifically about the fishway structure (eg. fishway width). The dataset ranges in dates of construction from 1882 to 2020 and includes fishways from all states on the eastern coast of the United States.
Requests were sent to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission state representatives to collect fishway data from the areas within their responsibility. The state representatives were requested to review and submit their fishway data into a provided fishway data template table, a Microsoft Excel (version 2108 (Build 14326.20962 Click-to-Run)) worksheet with the same columns that are present in the provided dataset for this release and containing records for fishways already obtained by USGS staff. The state representatives were requested to update this table and add additional entries for fishways not covered within the existing dataset.
Data requests were received, completed, and returned by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission state representatives. These individual datasets were then compiled into a single Excel worksheet with columns being the same as the separate fishway data templates and rows consisting of all provided fishways for the coastal states of the eastern United States.
The compiled fishway dataset for the coastal states of the eastern United States was assessed for consistency via the R scripting language (version 4.1.2) and the Integrated Development Environment, RStudio (version 2021.09.2 Build 382). Any erroneously missing data were entered such as entering a fish passage structure type code (upstream or downstream) where it was missing despite the record having an entry in the relevant fish passage structure type. Additionally, these data were assessed for common formatting of fields where appropriate, such as the state abbreviations being the same case, which will assist users in querying the dataset. Three fields were also added to these data, upstream and downstream fishway structure type codes converted to a plain language format and an owner type field. These were created to assist end users in summarizing and representing these data by structure and owner type.
To note, the ESRI Shapefile had records removed that had a value of 0 or were missing a value in the latitude or longitude of both the fishway structure and associated barrier as these records could not be represented spatially. Additionally, the dataset, including all records with a 0 or missing latitude or longitude values, was converted to the more accessible csv format.
Cooperators: Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
