Monday 20th October:  One of our regular Goosander & Coromorant counts was planned for today, but when I checked the water levels on the web, there were 2-3ft spates just about everywhere and as the count protocol requires stable water levels for consistency, there was no choice but to call it all off. Was just starting work in the office instead when James announced that over 50 fish had gone through the Gala counter already and that it would be good day for trapping there. As Kenny working at other traps, I went out with James to the Gala. Lots of fish, mostly salmon, showing  below the cauld but a lot of problems working the trap with so many leaves in the water. James had to go and get more mesh to make extra screens (an advantage of a trap in the middle of a town is that extra equipment is easily available). I took the chance to really observe how the fish were jumping up to the exit channel  from the last pool of the ladder and entering the "funnel" of the trap. Soon became clear that this was not an easy jump for them and that those coming from an angle hit the sides of the funnel and fell back down again. Those jumping clear up the middle landed just in front of the narrow part of the funnel and got through. The "funnel" will need to be moved back (further upstream) to give more space between it and the landing area for the jumping fish, something that can be done now that more of the security grids over the exit channel have been made moveable. Got about a dozen fish to measure, but there were many unsuccesfull jumps. More fish arriving below the cauld all the time we were there (till 15.00). As last year's count has already been passed, it looks as if the Gala counter is going to have a bigger total this year. James off to do the Peebles traps while I go back to the office to prepare for the meetings of the next two days. See a bit of the live broadcasting from Rutherford that has been on the BBC all day about Gyrodactylus, which will lead up to film from Norway on the evening news, showing a fish eradication from an infected river there.

Tuesday 22nd October: A meeting of the Area Advisory Group (AAG) for the Tweed area of the SolwayTweed River Basin. Under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) all of the European Union has been divided into these river "basins"( a misleading term, as many are groups of rivers, each of which is a "basin" or catchment in its own right). The eastern and western Border rivers (the Solway rivers, the Cumbrian Eden and the Tweed) make up a basin of their own and for each Basin, Management Plans are being drawn up, so that the requirements of the WFD can be met. To achieve these aims,  baseline classifications of all the water bodies, Running, Still, Coastal and Groundwater in a Basin have to be drawn up so it can be seen which have to be improved and which are already in a satisfactory state - and this is being done for the whole of the EU. For surface waters, there are five grades of Ecological Status,  Excellent, Good, Moderate, Poor and Bad and all water bodies (excepting those excluded as being "Heavily Modified" for human usage) have to either remain or become either Excellent or Good. The classification of the water bodies of the Tweed has being going on for a couple of years now and we have had a number of meetings and discussions with SEPA (who are doing this in Scotland) and the EA (doing it in England) over this. The extraordinary thing is that, despite the WFD being a piece of European legislation and there having been countless meetings all over the EU to agree on common standards and procedures, SEPA and the EA have ended up classifying water bodies using different criteria. SEPA do not use fish data and instead put great stress on morphological criteria - dams, caulds, weirs, canalisations, fishing croys, flood defences etc. The EA only take such criteria into account for waters already classed as Good or Excellent on other criteria, including fish data. Their view is that if morphology is adverse, it will be one of the factors causing water bodies to fall below the Good level anyway. The result of all this is that most of the Tweed catchment in Scotland "fails" the WFD, being classed as Moderate, due to all the morphological alterations that have taken place over the last 1000 years or so. However, in the same catchment across the Border, things are much "better", with half the water bodies being Good or better. The projections for the end of the first six year WFD cycle accentuate the difference, with almost all of the English catchment passing the test, while little changes in the Scottish catchment. This is all due to the extreme emphasis given to morphological criteria by SEPA - things can't improve on their classification system without streams being re-meandered (having the bends put back into straight sections), flood defences being altered, discharge patterns  from reservoirs being changed etc etc - all expensive and difficult things. In England, however, things can improve on their classification system by sorting out biological and pollution problems, which are much easier and cheaper to deal with. Our fish survey data, which is not used by SEPA, but is by the EA, actually shows that there are excellent Salmon or Trout populations in many areas classified as Moderate or even Poor, on the SEPA  morphologically-based system - we will be having another meeting with them about this. It seems to me that if morphological alterations to water bodies don't actually result in biological deterioration, then it really is very questionable whether  these alterations (which can be centuries old) are actually  having any real impact on the quality of a river or stream, other than aesthetic. I now have to draw up a list of where our fish data agrees and disagrees with the SEPA classification for a meeting with them. Personally, I think that the fish, who  actually live in the water, will have a better idea of the quality of their habitat than any human walking along a bank or sitting at a desk can have.

Wednesday 22nd October: Up to Edinburgh in the afternoon to join a RAFTS meeting at Pentland House, about stock assessments - following on from the meeting in Perth about a month ago.

Thursday 23rd October: In the office all day, composing the RAFTS presentation for the Fisheries Research Forum on the 31st.

Friday 24th October: Nick and Fay both on leave, so no weekly staff meeting. Most of the day on the RAFTS presentation - found out some new PowerPoint animations