Monday 5th July: The electric-fishing season started today, with quantitative sites on the Leader, just below the office.  This method involves netting off a section of the river, fishing through it three times and then calculating the total population present - it's the way we used to do all our salmon sampling till we changed to the Fry Index method we use now. The quantitative method gives a great deal of precise information - but for only a few sites, since we can only do three in a day, with a team of five. With Fry Index, fishing for 3 minutes, a team of two can do 12-15 sites a day and with three teams, up to 45 sites a day. This gives us many more "pixels" in the picture we get of the distribution and abundance of salmon fry throughout the catchment. However, we are keeping on a number of these quantitative sites for continuity and also because they provide the sort of data SEPA need for the Water Framework Directive assessments. However, it was a false start today - as has become almost traditional, the first outing for the electric-fishing machines after their Spring servicing results in a break-down and it happened again. We've learnt from experience to have the first sites of each new season near to the office, so we don't waste time in fruitless long journeys. Called in a local electrician who checked it out and talked to the servicers in Inverness and a spare part is on its way. Carried on with a backpack machine to take the genetics sample planned for this site anyway and then back to the office to deal with e-mails, including one that has reached me from Australia by a round-about route, looking for information on the construction of trout traps. There, trout are an alien species and they are thinking of trapping their spawning runs as a way of reducing their numbers.

Tuesday 6th July: Supposed to be electric-fishing today, but with the machine out of action, work instead on a discussion paper drafted by James on the best methods for analysing our electric-fishing results. In the afternoon, out with Niall to download load  acoustic loggers at the bottom of the river - no movements, not surprisingly.

Wednesday 7th July: Was supposed to be electric-fishing again today, but instead spent more or less the whole day on the paper on the analysis of electric-fishing results. With so much of our time and effort spent on electric-fishing, we have to be sure we are squeezing every last bit of useful information out of our surveys. The guilty machine itself was found to be beyond the local electrician, so will have to be returned to Inverness.

Thursday 8th July: In the morning  working on the electric-fishing analyses discussion paper, then a scale-reading sesssion with Barry and the Napier student who's analysing changes in growth patterns over the last 10 years. There have been major changes over this time, to the extent that the old International rules are obsolete. Scales grow proportionally with fish, so when scales were only half their final size, the fish was half its size as well etc. (more or less, the precise relationship is not quite straight). This means that the size of fish at different points in its life-history can be "back-calculated". The old rule was that the first Sea-winter should occur when a fish was 40-60cms in length - but there are now fish  that return to their rivers, here and elsewhere, at this sort of size after a second summer in the sea as well & so were smaller than this at the time of their first winter in the sea. In the afternoon with Kenny to the Tweedsmuir trap to start its repair and renovations. Determined not to be caught out this year - last couple of years had these planned for August, the "low-water" month and got flooded off. After 10 years, the woodwork on the traps is getting well worn and rather battered.

Friday 9th July: Weekly meeting in the morning, then e-mails, admin and preparation for a Code of Good Practice meeting on Monday.