by Harrison Davies, Bournemouth University

At the end of March, I travelled to Wool near Wareham to help with the SAMARCH fish catching. When I got there the staff showed me the new trap that was made, this made catching the Salmon and Trout way more efficient. The days were fairly quiet however I was on night shifts the last two days and due to the heavy rain, a night before, the trap was catching a lot more. We were even getting nearly 20 at a time at some points, a busy night would sometimes go until 5 am especially if the day was warm.

We made multiple modifications to the trap allowing, for example better water flow going through the pipe; one day we unbuilt the whole trap to raise it slightly as the amount of water was damaging terrain around the trap. We had hot days this time which meant we caught a little more in the day as the fish prefer higher temperatures.  We had another heavy rain night towards the end of my time there which meant we caught lots, measuring, weighing, and counting them all in the space of 30 minutes did get tough however due to our teamwork we got by fine.