Firstly, apologies for not posting before but in the absence of Chris things are getting busier.
September saw us attempting to get the rest of the electrofishing completed. We managed to complete one catchment, thanks to Iza, and undertook some electrofishing in another 2 which left 5 not touched. That wasn't too bad given the weather over the past 2 years and the number of catchments left to catch up on! Certainly there's a happy Biologist now. As well as that we managed to get some more genetic samples from the Laxford catchment. These will be tested for fish farm genes as part of the RAFTS Managing Interactions Project. More on that when the results come in.
The end of October saw the first ever SNH/RAFTS Invasive Non-native Species Conference. This was a really good meeting with thought provoking talks and some resulted in some good action points. Hopefully these will be followed through and the native Scottish environment given a helping hand. It will take some effort to ensure that the next Conference is better, so thanks to all for their time and effort in getting this going.
November was spent on Broodstock netting. The Laxford came first and the timing was perfect. It was fantastic to see the number of fish present and the size and condition. All of the broodstock and more were collected in one morning, with a large number missed by the backpacks. The fish were determined to move upstream or retain their territories despite the dropping water and us! The salmon were all in good condition and most were large. As normal the DNA was collected and this work forms part of the Reay Forest project to assess the effectiveness of the hatchery operation.
Unfortunately that was where the luck ended and while a call be the Inver team for help with their broodstock collection saw several attempts in freezing conditions, we drew a blank. All attempts were then cancelled as the fish started to spawn naturally in order to avoid walking over the redds.
Unfortunately November also saw a repeat of the pollution incident reported in August. Yet more communications with SEPA and SNH were undertaken in a bid to get the issue sorted. We live in hope that the farm will get itself sorted and that there will be no repeats next year. However it is for SEPA to enforce and we can only monitor and report.
December saw the Fishy Fayre at Kinlochbervie High School. Part of the Fish2Dish programme and involving P6 - S2 pupils, a range of people from the fishing industry attended to give talks and demonstrations on their area. The subjects covered were wide ranging, from navigation, dressing up in specialist diving and fishing gear, knots, cooking, fish identification, dissection, ageing and product design. By all accounts this was a great day and enjoyed by all. The Trust gave several talks on fish ageing - and Shona then lost her voice!! - which introduced a few potential future scale readers. There was an amazing amount of skill involved for a first attempt. The remainder of the project will involve the children operating in groups to prepare a dish, design the packaging and sell it to the audience. Good luck to them and congratulations to Steph and Katy for a successful project.
Other than that it has been a round of meetings and report writing. The eletrofishing and sweep netting reports are coming on well and will hopefully be finished at the start of the year. As in previous years the reports will be published on the Website (http://www.wsft.co.uk/) as they become available. In the meantime we have posted the reports on the Geisgeil eel project and a project describing a protocol to monitor elver recruitment. Again, these can be accessed via the Website.
We'd like to take this opportunity to thank the many people who have given up their time to help the Trust over 2011. Without these volunteers the Trust would not be able to operate and they are definitely the unsung but not unappreciated arm of Sutherland.
Merry Christmas to all our readers and a very Happy New Year. Tight lines for 2012!
