And so the surveys begin!

June 22, 2009

Well Monday was a busy day of trying to get myself organised for our first electro fishing surveys. Bradley George is our summer placement helping me with Surveys. Brad also helped last year and for some reason (must be a gluten for punishment) has come back this year. Although I have Brads help I still need people to come along and do electro fishing with us. So if you are able to help with this please drop me an email or phone call. It is a great way to see just how many fish there are in even the smallest of becks!

Monday we got our kit together and headed for Habergham to survey a proposed introduction site for trout fry. Essentially we wanted to check that there were no trout in this site. We had found none last year in this beck and it was assumed to be the result of historical mine water pollution. So we were going to a different tributary of this sub-catchment to get some fry to transfer. However when we got to site on the first pass of the first survey we got trout!! A good omen, and also meant we didn’t need to do a fry transfer. We also went on site to meet some Building contractors who are working on the Calder who require a fish rescue. We had a positive meeting and in three weeks we will undertake the work. The brilliant thing is that the money raised from this will be reinvested into the catchment.

Tuesday I spent the day in St Michaels and st Johns Primary school with Helen Nightingale of the EA, and two of her team (Jason and Carl). The day was spent educating the different age groups of kids about types of pollution, their effects, what to do in the event of a pollution incident, and how not to pollute in the first place. After the talk on this I took the kids down and did a kick sample on Mearly Brook with them – Which they absolutely loved!! No one including the teachers could believe how much life there was in there. We hope to run more of these days to help educate people from a young age about the importance of clean water.

Wednesday we went out and managed 3 surveys before the pouring rain got the better of us! Soaked through we limped back to the office and spent the afternoon doing paperwork! So far we have seen some positive results and I am encouraged that the suitable low flows and lack of floods has given the trout redds and fry a greater chance of survival.

I’m not sure if anyone has seen Live Ribble Valley this month, but we featured in an article called Matching the Hatch, where we discussed the types and size of inverts and how many flies were needed in your box! This article was seen by a producer of Radio Lancashire who invited us in for an interview on Thursday with Ted Robbins. This went really well and I know that at least one person heard it (thanks mum!). In the afternoon we got out for one quick survey before going to Lutra house to meet With Richard and Rebecca to discuss monitoring potential salmonid populations changes that may occur as a result of Settle Hydro Scheme.

Friday we completed a Quantitive survey, which we rushed back from to meet with Dai “the Duff” Roberts – our Riverfly partnership tutor. We helped set up and then left him with Stephen to check our workshop site actually had inverts in it! I then Nipped down to Bushburn to meet Mel Dyack and some of his volunteers:

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We spent a good hour and a half pulling Himalayan Balsam, it went really well and we cleared a large area. Many Thanks to Mel and his team!

Saturday was the Riverfly Workshop day, which went off without a hitch, and I got the impression that everyone really enjoyed themselves. And we were really pleased because at the end of th day we had another 11 water quality monitors trained and itching to go out and survey! Thank you to all who attended, and anyone who is interested please drop me an email as I am almost ready to book the next course!

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