Calder surveys finished, Ribble beginnings

July 20, 2009

Last week felt like one of the longest weeks I’ve had in quite some time, not through lack of enjoyment, but so much done, with more left to do.  I hadn’t seen Philip in a while, so rather than leave the office at 8 to get surveying we delayed surveying till after he had been in for our normal meeting.  Much was discussed as there is a huge amount going on both front and back of house so to speak.  After Philip left, Emma Thompson of the EA popped in to discuss where we were going with our Signal Crayfish project.  It was a good meeting and certainly helped to focus the mind on the project direction.  Our work so far has been very positive, but we still lack true hard data as to the effectiveness.  So we are planning a session in August to ascertain the true effectiveness of the equipment in it’s current form – if it’s not as effective as we would like now, it can always be improved.  However funding is becoming an issue as this is time consuming work.

After the meeting I headed out with Brad and we completed our Sabden surveys, and moved onto the Hyndburn, were to my amazement, we found Salmon fry, in relatively good numbers.  This was in contrast to no salmonid fry at all last year.  I hope that the water quality remains high and fish continue to spawn here as until Padiham weir is made passable there is very limited amounts of habitat available to Calder Salmon.

At 4 p.m. we headed to Nelson to meet with Lee Collins of the EA to look at a pollution incident I reported a week or so ago.  We immediately found it, and Lee pulled up the drainage map on his lap top and was able to identify that there was sewage coming out of a surface water pipe.  In most circumstances this occurs when foul drains are misconnected, either through ignorance or laziness.  Lee got onto UU who came out and were working on the problem until 10:00p.m. that night, they discovered the cause, a blocked screen causing overflow from foul into surface drains, and cleared it.  There will be more follow up work to make sure that the connection between the drains is severed so that even if the screen blocks it will never happen again – this is a good result!

Tuesday we completed the last of the Calder surveys, with a Quantitative survey on Pendle water and two surveys on Bushburn.  Bushburn was a disappointment but Pendle was an improvement on last year, including a Brown trout of near 40cm in length!!

Wednesday, we visited the upper parts of Hyndburn to discover a sewage pollution, which was immediately rung through to the EA, and they are investigating.  We then headed to the tributaries of the lower Ribble to start out Ribble surveys.  At 4p.m. I met up with Mel Dyack and his trustee volunteers and we headed to stock beck and spent a couple of hours litter picking.  This was great and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves, whilst helping to improve the environment.

The Girls with two bags of litter they pciked from Stock Beck.

Thursday we surveyed Bezza Brook from top to bottom and confirmed that our new Eel pass on the weir near the bottom of the Brook is in good working order as we found more eels, than anywhere else.  Including eels that would have been elvers not 6 weeks ago.  What a great results!!  We also undertook a survey on Bashall Brook right at the top of the sub-catchment and got some great results, and also Pig Hill Brook – a new site where we found trout fry!

Friday we were rained off, and we had the beginnings of the flood that the system has need for a good few weeks.  The Becks should now have  had a good washout, and I’ll bet a fair few salmon and sea trout were caught over the weekend.  I hope to see a few applications for our Catch and Release Badges.  I spent a day catching up in the Office and we also had a meeting with the staff from Forest of Bowland AONB and Countryside Rangers from Lancashire County Council.  This was very positive, and it looks like we can work well together to improve the aquatic environment with them.

I did not get out to fish on the weekend, and was disappointed as the RFCA Webcam showed the Ribble to be in near perfect order.  I was gutted but, that’s the way it goes.  Perhaps this evening…..

Posted by Charles Edward Poate | Filed Under Restoration and Conservation Projects, Surveys, Threats to the River, Volunteers, Working Partners 

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