Dowling is among dozens of volunteers this spring watching for the piscine version of the swallows returning to Capistrano. River herring are silvery, iridescent fish that spend much of their adult life in the ocean before returning to estuaries to spawn. The name refers to two species, alewives and blueback herring. The fish arrive in the Hudson River in April and May, en route to freshwater tributaries where they reproduce.

The bony fish, which can grow to a little more than a foot in length, are one of the building blocks of the Hudson — delicacies to other fish and birds as well as anglers who enjoy pickled herring or need bait for striped-bass fishing. But as their numbers crash along the East Coast, scientists are trying to figure out how herring use the river.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation began its Volunteer River Herring Monitoring Program in 2008. That effort is in addition to the DEC's Hudson River Fisheries Unit evaluating the future of herring fishing in the Hudson. By July, the state has to submit a plan to the interstate commission coordinating the management of shared fisheries along the East Coast. The bluebacks and alewives returning to the Hudson and elsewhere each year circulate in the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to Florida.

"Not many people know about the decline of herring along the coast. It's not a sexy sport fish," said DEC fisheries biologist Bob Adams.

Population numbers are hard to come by. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission blames that on a lack of data from both the fishing industry as well as independent sources. The commission does point out commercial landings of river herring along the coast dropped from 13.7 million pounds in 1985 to less than 1 million pounds in 2007.

The state's data doesn't support having a "sustainable" fishery in the Hudson, said Andy Kahnle, who heads the Hudson River Fisheries Unit. Sustainable means adults and production of young are not in decline. The herring collected in the Hudson, he said, are getting smaller in size. Smaller fish are younger fish, which don't reproduce as well as older fish.

River herring, like other fish in the Hudson, face myriad survival pressures. Habitat loss, invasive species and ocean bycatch are considered possible causes of decline. Bycatch refers to ocean trawlers inadvertently catching one species while targeting another. The commission considers the bycatch of river herring by boats seeking Atlantic herring to be "a significant concern."

But some in the fishing industry disagree. Mary Beth Tooley of Small Pelagic Group, an organization representing Maine-based Atlantic herring and mackerel vessels, and a member of the New England Fisheries Management Council, said the industry is developing plans to minimize bycatch. Atlantic herring, which spend their entire lives in salt water, are different fish than river herring.

"I don't think it's a major cause of decline. I don't think we have enough data to say," she said.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia and North Carolina have closed their river-herring fisheries. Presently, there is no daily limit on how many river herring anglers can take in New York. That will probably change.

"Our data are not good enough to defend the status-quo fishery as sustainable," DEC's Kahnle said. "Therefore, we plan to propose a restricted fishery ... with the commitment to monitor lengths, juvenile abundance, and catch rates in the fisheries."

More information is where Dowling and other volunteers play a role. With about 150 miles of estuary (the portion of the Hudson affected by saltwater and tides, from the Battery to Troy) and about 70 major tributaries (freshwater streams and rivers flowing into the Hudson), there is a lot of water to eyeball.

Volunteers visit one of eight specific tributaries twice a week and look for herring for 15 minutes. In Westchester, the Pocantico River in Sleepy Hollow and Sprout Brook in Cortlandt are being monitored.

By the study's midpoint in the first week of May, herring had been sighted everywhere but the Pocantico, which was bad news for Trish Lindemann. She takes her 7-year-old twin boys there to search for herring.

"I think you sort of have to like being outside and observing the wider world around you," said Lindemann, who handles the business end of her and her husband's New York City law firm. "Believe me, I'll be thrilled if and when we see a fish."

Others have gotten lucky on Sprout Brook but not Dowling. As of May 21, her forays have been fishless. For her, it's been about the Hudson overall.

"Anything I can do to help keep it healthy, I'll get involved," she said.

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