September is now over, which means so is our annual Electrofishing programme. Electofishing is a monitoring technique used to assess the health and abundance of fish species in our becks and rivers.

This year we have had our busiest yet, with a full summer programme of days, between June and September. We asked for the help of volunteers to lend a hand and we had a fantastic response, with many dates being oversubscribed.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the programme this year. Without you it wouldn’t be possible to carry out this vital monitoring and gather so much important information.

All in all, we surveyed 35 sites! This supports project work currently ongoing on the Duddon, Furness peninsula and Kent catchment areas. We have also carried out ongoing baseline data for the Crake and Leven catchments, which will help us assess potential practical interventions in the future.

We continue to monitor some of our past project sites including Greenholme beck, where following the by-passing of a weir, we once again found salmon upstream, where previously the species had been absent.

Another good success was finding a good population of salmon on the main River Kent above Staveley.

Over the winter months we will be writing up results as well as working with the Environment Agency and The Rivers Trust who have funded some of these surveys, to share our data on Priority salmon rivers. Once complete, results will be added to our website and interactive map: https://scrt.co.uk/electrofishing-map/

The Electrofishing programme is funded by Environment Agency as well as project specific funding, including UU Raw water and LIFE R4Ever Kent.