A good limp but not stopping me from getting around!!
June 8, 2009
Well the short week was quite welcome as a slightly (- under statement!) sore knee had me limping most of last week. I decided that perhaps this was a good excuse to finally get my desk clear of paperwork. Well I got loads done and my to do list shrank but some how I have more paper all over my desk! Perhaps I should learn to file things properly, but where the fun in that! Plus a messy desk is a proof of work load!
Tuesday was a good day, first thing we headed down to the Highways dept for Ribble Valley to discuss making Road Culverts passable for fish, we I have identified 3 that are defiantely impassable and will be having a negative impact on fish migration and populations. The guys down there were brilliant, really keen to work with us, providing us with valuable information and we have decided now that we need to pick one site and run a trial to see if we can make them passable, but also design them such that the pass is not an issue for culvert maintenance etc.
In the afternoon I cleared my back log of emails, and sent out a few emails to form links with many of the people I had met on the previous week at Durham. It is so important to have these courses to allow ideas to be exchanged on all manner of topics not just the training course! I did however get some bad news on grant funding front, we failed in a bid to get money for our River Don Fish pass, however we have some indication from a new party that there would be money available so we threw an application together and got that over to them (so cross you fingers!).
Wednesday was the day that I finally sat down and sorted my electro fishing schedule for this year. 316 sites, June 15th to October 4th is the plan. This works out at 20 a week (but I am hoping for a week off at some point) plus if it rains and we get a spate… not to mention other duties. Our priority is to get round all of last years sites then to worry about additional sites.
On Thursday morning I met a photographer (Charlotte of lottie designs – www.lottiedesigns.com) who took some pictures of me kick sampling for the Live Ribble Valley magazine article. In a surprise we actually had a reallly good kick sample with only the True Mayfly abscent! Charlotte was absolutely amazed by the amount of invertebrate life in the river, as was another passer by!
Later on I purchased some equipment to help with the speed of our surveys (electro fishing, invert and habitat) – it is a pda with gps and Arcpad (arc pacd is a Geographical information System or GIS that allows modelling databasing and navigation). I have built and electronic form that will allow our data to be entered directly and then uploaded to my PC in the correct format and already analysed. Last year data inputting and analysis took me 18 days - then I had to interpret the data! This will now save me 18 days that I can spend on other things, as well as make sure that I don’t forget to record anything.
Friday Philip came in for a brief chat, byt typically having not seen him for several weeks it turned into a longer meeting than planned and I got away late for my next meeting. This was with Stephanie Peyaer and Nathan Edmonds (of CEFAS), to discuss a research project for salmonid predation by signal crayfish. We walked over our site getting a good feel for the subcatchment and getting a good chance to discuss the impact, and a quick stone turn had Nathan gob smacked by the number of signals (and how small they were). This is a common misconception – our crayfish are so small that they are not worth eating if you tried to have a meal from them you would struggle and spend a long time shelling! This is because our upland becks are not as productive as the lowland rivers where the crayfish get bigger. Overall the meeting went well and we will hopefully be going ahead with the research next year (and maybe some funding!!).
The knee is now nearly back to normal but is still giving me some jipp. Another week of going easy should do it…. I hope it does it as the electro fishing is going to be pretty intensive! Oh and sorry salmon anglers I’m praying for good weather this summer – real good weather not good fishing weather, as electro fishing in the rain is not fun if not impossible!
If you are interested in volunteering to do some electro fishing (I will be doing some Saturdays) please give me a shout jack@ribbletrust.com it’s really good fun and a real eye opener!
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