Saturday 27th March: In the Lufton Arms Hotel, near Launceston on the Devon/Cornwall boundary to give a talk on salmon management at the AGM of the South-west Rivers Association. Go through the history of the Tweed as a recovered, post-industrial river with 40% of its catchment blocked off and the water so foul & polluted in parts that animals could not live in it, to its present condition. The rivers in this part of the world are still suffering badly though, with sediments clogging the gravels so eggs cannot breathe and water abstraction and pollution still major problems. Was interested to hear that the local water company is becoming a driving force to clean up the rivers, for the very simple and obvious reason that if river water is cleaner, then so are reservoirs and costs of treating water are reduced.

Monday 29th March; Out with Niall getting sites for acoustic listening stations sorted out. Have the test tag and hydrophones so can see at what distance the signals can be detected. A good way of doing this suggested by the local boatman - put the test tag onto a hookless spoon and spin it out into the river, which worked very well.  To B & Q afterwards to get materials together.

Tuesday 30th March: Spent the morning finishing progress reports on the TTGI and the Living North Seas work, for which we have had funding from the Scottish Government through RAFTS as these have to be in before the end of the financial year. In the afternoon out to do smolt trap repairs with Niall, but defeated by the weather - fingers too cold to work. Back in the office to work on my talk at tomorrow's RAFTS conference on stocking.

Wednesday 31st March:  Supposed to be giving a talk at the RAFTS conference at Dunkeld today, but Soutra and the A7 blocked by snow and later hear others haven't been able to travel so it was cancelled. Spend the day instead reading the initial scoping report for the windfarm proposed off the  Berwickshire coast & drafting comments.  The obvious question is whether it is in the migration route of our salmon smolts or not, but nothing is known of how and where these travel. There's some information on smolts off the Aberdeenshire coast, but nothing for further south. Reading about offshore windfarms gives the information that the driving of the foundation piles has, in some places,  been timed to avoid migration and spawning periods of some marine fish species - the noise / percussion made can be fatal to fish. While a good element of our Sea-trout go south, it's possible that this wind farm will be within the feeding area of those that don't make the long migration. There's evidence that the foundations of these turbines can act as artificial reefs and increase fish populations in their areas, which could be a good thing, for Sea-trout (but not if it increases the number of large, predatory, fish living in the migration path of our salmon smolts). The RTC is also responsible for Eel and Lamprey in the Tweed and they also have marine migrations - but again, nothing is known of their routes at sea.

Thursday 1st April: A full staff turn-out for the First Aid refresher course, which took all day. In the evening worked on the final bits of the Code of Good Practice for the Fisheries Forum.

Friday 2nd April: Weekly meeting in the morning, then dealing with admin & e-mails. Did some thinking about the trout trap results and what they are showing. It is a puzzle as to why there should be so many small, 1year old trout and then such a big drop to 2 and 3 yr olds. Some must go off to sea, but it almost looks as if they all do. We need to know a lot more about the trout caught by anglers, which are the 2 to 4 yr olds and, particularly, where they come from and what sex they are & how they relate to what we see in the traps.