By Alastair Scott
After volunteering for a couple of weeks for the GWCT Annual Salmonid Parr Tagging at the Frome I am exhausted – but I had a fantastic time! Having very little to no prior fishing experience, being told to step into a river and then willingly put ~200v into it on my first day seemed daunting. However, by the time I left 2 weeks later we were electrofishing confidently and had ~8,000 of the desired 13,000 fish caught, measured, weighed, sampled and tagged with passive integrated transponders. We also described and recorded various habitats across the catchment.
By monitoring across the catchment, we can not only observe the salmon population numbers but also relate events happening both at sea and in freshwater on them. It was especially interesting to see such an important project keep having to justify itself to governing bodies and even the local landowners – giving a glimpse of what such research is really like.
This was a wonderful experience for me, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. A huge thank you to everyone who made it as welcoming and fun as it was!
Hi guys.. I am enjoying your blog and the accompanying website. I live in Poole, love Salmon and Sea Trout and would be happy to assist with some field work if needed .n Keep up the good work