Salmon Tagging
About the Project
2012 will herald a first for the Ribble and the Rivers Trust. For a number of years the idea of having our very own fish tagging scheme had reverberated without getting off the ground. Owing to the invention of our trustee Dave Wilmot, we will be undertaking a tracking of spring salmon on their upward migration of the River Ribble. Anecdotally, ‘springers’ are known for their limited run upriver although this was not always the case. Since an outbreak of the fish disease UDN (Ulcerative Dermal Necrosis) depleted stocks nationwide mid last century, the Ribble retained a small steadfast run after healthy numbers had been previously reported during the 1940s (Houghton, 1942). Now we wish to learn more about these fish so that we may propagate their numbers through targeted habitat improvements tying into our Ribble Life Project. This will require our greater understanding of their migratory routes and spawning locations to be most effective.
Whilst this is our primary goal, the activity will provide a unique opportunity to monitor levels of angling effort on our targeted fish. Each salmon containing a transponder will be marked externally with a tag to reveal them to any angler who captures it. As always we are reliant on your support and for anglers to notify us of their captures. We strongly appeal to anglers to return these fish too, because this will help to prolong the study. Over the longer term we hope to give springers the best chance of successfully spawning in the Ribble Catchment. To do this will also require an accurate knowledge of the levels of angling effort upon this stock and inform our local clubs.
A project team was assembled in November 2011 comprising of our partners and sponsors within the Environment Agency and the Ribble Fisheries Consultative Association. This team is now driving the project forwards.
Our Progress so far…
4th May 2012
A brief update following on from last evening’s Ribble Fisheries Consultative Group meeting: In response to some criticisms for being too forthcoming and too hesitant to publish information about the project, a straw poll was undertaken amongst those present. The vote was cast as to whether or not the locations of tagged should fish be disclosed to interested anglers and groups. This included the possibility of generalising the information to return numbers of fish present in a river section. The attendees unanimously rejected this idea, so for the foreseeable future the project team aim to retain this information. If you are by the river bank, please feel free to ask any (other!) questions you may like?
26th April 2012
The re-branding of the Trust’s 4×4 has brought about a good opportunity to report back on what has been the busiest month for the project team. March’s frustrations were soon a distant memory following the arrival of the kit in early April. This quickly propelled us towards the installation of our fixed monitoring equipment on the bankside at nine of our intended ten locations. All within a week of receipt! Arriving from Canada via our partner’s (Environment Agency) Preston office, the project team received a brief crash course supported by our suppliers Biotrack and Lotek to quickly get to grips with the hardware. The installations have been unique to individual sites requiring independent assessment in order to fine-tune this gear to account for radio signal attenuation and interference. All of the related landowners have been very accommodating in bringing us brews and letting us drill aerial brackets on to their property! Despite the expense of the kit, completing the job to a professional standard and finish has required a further £1500 worth of outlay. Typically we have scrimped and scraped and wherever possible, utilised local independent stores for this ancillary kit. Similarly, the practical skills and equipment donations of project team members, their wives and supporters deserves special mention for their contribution in maintaining the momentum during a time where river levels were conducive towards tagging. The floy tag tool whittlers and custom salmon carrier stitchers know who they are.
On the road with our installations.
So, on to the tagging…. Nobody could have anticipated the successful start experienced. Twelve of the targeted thirty fish for our first year have been tagged with a radio transponder over four (non-consecutive) days. Those captured have been 11lb to 25lb in weight, highly silvered, deep bodied multi-sea-winter fish. To date, all have been returned to the water in healthy condition under the auspices of our EA Welfare Officers, Mark Rudd and Neil Handy. Subsequently, the fish have been successfully detected via our fixed monitoring stations and active tracking equipment. Whilst the team has been duty bound not to reveal the precise locations of the fish, even in these initial stages, we are getting a good handle on the fishes’ behaviour with some surprising results. Dispersal both up and down the river has been recorded with some exceeding distances of 8 miles over the brief surveillance period. The onus will increasingly shift towards active tracking activities and maintaining a handle on fish as they spread through the catchment. We also hope to provide some more news on where fish are moving in the months ahead. The level of active tracking activity has been limited to date and yet, there has been a healthy interest and a few quizzical looks from the general public. Being by the river regularly has given us a good opportunity to hear the viewpoints of regular river users and capture these under our Ribble Life objectives.
A captured fish recovers in an oxygenated tank prior to its release to the river.
To angler readers of this blog, who may capture these fish, I would encourage you to get in touch with us to report these in. Whilst this will help us continue our surveillance, we have also incentivised the return and reporting of tagged fish by offering free fishing on the Trust’s passport beats next year. All individuals reporting their captures will be entered to the hat to win a day’s free fishing. For more details follow the link here. Furthermore, if you encounter any club members that have not heard about our project please spread the word about our project.
16th March 2012
My latest post brings news of both anticipation and frustration. We are poised to take receipt of the first batch of tracking equipment from the manufacturer any time now. Our project team is busily paving the way towards our first tagging by planning the hardware installation and acquiring the ancillaries. Landowners and angling clubs spanning the length of our study area progressively reached. This is no mean feat given that we will track the springers along forty miles of river. If you are aware of any clubs or individuals that have not heard of our plans and fall into this category, I would urge you to get in touch.
Whilst it has seemed odd to pass on details of the project without first tagging a fish, a communications brief was circulated around the clubs last month. This was in the hope that as many Ribble anglers are informed of our plans and encouraged to report (and return) captures of tagged fish. Interest in the project has been far and wide and without much publicity. Yet, we are keen to get up and running before we invite this on board. If you are an angler and have yet to read our brief then please see this below. The brief may also be viewed in some of the club houses along the Ribble. Again, any clubs that may find it useful to post the brief on a club noticeboard should get in touch and we should be happy to supply you with laminate copy.
All but all of the angling clubs have consented to supporting our activities and without this we would be truly scuppered. A round of thanks is due to each who has taken on the mantle of informing their club members and landowners. Likewise, we have met with many landowners and small businesses for the first time, whose intrigue in the project and good nature has culminated in their support. We do not wish to diminish the faith shown in the project and will adopt all practical measures to avoid disruption to landowner or angler’s activities.
With the anecdotal tales of spring fish now entering the river we are eager to get started……
31st January 2012
A belated Happy New Year on behalf of all of us on the Tracking Project Team. Things have moved up a gear since the last post with all of the tracking hardware now on order with our Canadian manufacturers and the semblance of a project that is underway. The arrival of the equipment is anticipated to be mid-March further to the arrival of synthetic alpha quartz crystals in Canada! Owing to the generosity of Len and Mary-Beth Morris, the Ribble Fisheries Consultative and Lancashire Fly we now have the initial funds to progress. Our gratitude and warm thanks is offered to them. This now provides us with the platform to start up whilst funding will be needed to keep the project moving along. If you feel that your club may be able to contribute then please get in touch.
Since the turn year we have been scoping out locations to monitor the river for tagged fish. Whilst we cannot say too much about them, we have liaised with many of the landowners to seek access permissions and will be continuing in this vain. I have been a taken by level of enthusiasm shown by these individuals and hope the same positivity will be extended along the banks of the Ribble in support of our handheld tracking efforts.
The team met last Friday to run through the finer details around the trapping and tracking exercises. Courtesy of the Environment Agency’s Ops Delivery Team, the fish trap was serviced earlier that week. As the sky greyed in the afternoon and the hailstorm teemed down, conditions were optimal to pay a visit! A brief role play, led by the Environment Agency’s Rebecca Tinsley, enabled our willing new operatives to learn how to reset the trap and consider the practicalities involved. All were in agreement that these opportunities would be vital if we are to become operable in the coming weeks. We hope that a balanced team of experience and committed people can be reactive in capturing a healthy sample of this year’s spring run.
Greater details are now filtering out via our angling contact Fred Higham in to the associated angling press and will be across the clubs as the new season approaches. Hence, look out for us in Fred’s article in Trout and Salmon each month. We are continuing to seek a special type of volunteer for a range of activities associated not only to tracking but for all of our projects for 2012. It is increasingly likely that we need to respond to suitable river conditions and therefore are unable to plan too far in advance for the tracking. Therefore, volunteers that are reactive whatever the conditions will be particularly important to us. If you feel that you fit this bill then please contact us through the usual channels.
19th December 2011
Commencing with our plans led to a search for the correct tracking equipment and development of a new project team. The former has been based upon past experiences leading to our trialling some acoustic equipment after visiting a related EA project on the River Mersey. Unfortunately this did not yield the results we would had hoped for and thus paved a way north to visit our partners on the River Dee in Aberdeenshire. Here, Dr Lorraine Hawkins has successfully led a successful radio tracking scheme delivered via collaborative partnership working. Using local ghillies to capture fish and implant transponders they have tracked fish since 2008 to inform decision-makers on the length of the angling season (see http://www.riverdeetracking.com/ for more details).
One broken Vauxhall Corsa and 19 hours driving later it felt good to say that I had brought home some knowledge of radio tracking salmon and of its practical tribulations. By using a series of tags located on the river bed I was able to hear how transponders were detected via increasingly audible bleeps on receiving devices. Stronger beeps were detectable when nearing the transponder, helping to pinpoint their locations down to within tens of metres. Once detected from the roadside, the ‘detection team’ wellied to walk the river bank armed with a handheld aerial. Within a few simple button pushes and paces upriver we were able to pinpoint the fish and recorded their whereabouts. These details were even conveyed online via their web-based tracking map! Whilst we will not be replicating a map, it was great to see how the operation could translate to our plans for the Ribble springers. The trip provided chance to acquire some trial equipment and I’m glad to report that this proved more successful than our first.
With the support of our partners at the Environment Agency, the RFCA through Fred Higham and trustees Dave Wilmot and Vince Edmondson, we will be acquiring the new radio tagging kit for 2012. Fish tagging is scheduled to begin in February and once in place our team on the ground volunteers will begin tracking efforts until the end of the year. Their efforts won’t just stop there though, as there will be further opportunities to monitor invasive species, otters and incidences of pollution whilst on site. The former activity will directly inform our INNS (Invasive Non-native Species) Project whilst we plan to repeat the project in two further years. All told, there will be a lot of work to meet our ambitious plans and if you would be interested in lending your support we would be very happy to hear from you. Contact me (Gareth Jones) on 01200 444452 or email me at gareth@ribbletrust.com.
