By Aurora Duncan, Bournemouth University

I thoroughly enjoyed taking part with the SAMARCH project in the summer of 2022. GWTC team were very knowledgeable and inspiring at how persevered throughout the challenges they faced. I’ve learnt a lot of skills such as netting, checking the health of juveniles, identifying a kingfisher mark, data entry on computer and scale packets.

I was educated specifically on salmon and trout life cycles, how to identify both fish and their ideal habitat to live. Unfortunately, due to the record warm summer this year and multiple other factors a lot of sites where an abundance of juveniles would be seen in the past, there were not to be seen this year. This is useful information to understand how to improve the habitats for salmon and trout.