Annual Report 2017
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Tweed Foundation 2017 Annual Report Contents Page The Tweed Foundation’s Annual Report 2017 Chairman’s Report 2 Director’s Foreword 3 Environment Temperature Monitoring 4 Fish Populations The North-east England Drift Nets and Tweed Catches 5-9 Monitoring Juvenile Salmon 2017 Electro-fishing Results 10-13 Bird Predation 14-15 The Hatchery Question 16-19 Counting Gala Fish Counter 20 Whiteadder Fish Counter 20 Ettrick Fish Counter 21 Brown Trout 2017 Brown Trout Catches 22 Tweed Brown Trout Male:Female Ratios 23 Brown Trout Spot Pattern Recognition 24-25 Brown Trout Tracking 26-27 Fish Easements 28 Upper Tweed Fish Trap 29 Other Species 2017 Grayling Catches 30 Pink Salmon 31 Education Snapshot 2017 32-36 Consultancy 37 Our Services 37 Scale Reading 38 Find us on Social Media 38 Accounts 39 Trustees & Staff 40 Acknowledgements 40 2017 Objectives & Achievements 41-42 Join: Friends of The Tweed Foudnation 43 Donations & Gift Aid 44 Map of the Tweed Catchment 45 Published July 2018 © The Tweed Foundation Front cover: An Upper Tweed burn near Tweedsmuir – a tributary which The Tweed Foundation monitors for Trout. www.tweedfoundation.org.uk 1 Chairman’s Report Rod catches for salmon continued to decline in 2017 and the collapse of the once famed autumn run has had a severe economic impact on the entire river. Jobs and livelihoods are now at risk. Against this background, many of those who have a direct interest in the management and well- being of the fishery - Proprietors, Tweed Commissioners, boatmen and anglers - are understandably questioning the activities of The Foundation and how that impacts on the management policies of the River Tweed Commission. There is a compelling argument that the current low returns of adult salmon are part of a long-term cycle of changing run timings. It is therefore more important than ever that we adhere to the core principles of maintaining a long-term Fisheries Management Plan and making detailed stock assessments through electro- fishing, fish counters and smolt traps. It is only by undertaking this core fieldwork that we can target limited resources to where they are most effective and accumulate the ammunition to, for example, take a more aggressive stance towards predator control. One thing we are all agreed on is that in an era of lower marine survival, maximising smolt production is the only way available to us of increasing the numbers of returning adults and I am confident the work done by The Foundation in coming years will continue to enhance our ability to achieve that goal. As you can see from this report, The Foundation staff continue to make the most of their limited resources. They have undertaken a wide range of routine monitoring of all species and have brought forward two important projects on the Ettrick and Gala Waters. In that context, they have worked closely with Marine Scotland Science and many other Agencies directly involved in River Basin Management. They also, in the current climate, have a pressing need to communicate what river biologists do and why. A methodical evidence-based approach does not give the instant solutions/actions that many people, understandably, are anxious for but, during what is a difficult time for the Tweed Fishery, they have retained all their enthusiasm and commitment to a very full work programme. Douglas Dobie 2 www.tweedfoundation.org.uk Director’s Foreword With the Tweed fishery currently experiencing leaner times, The Tweed Foundation’s work is more important than ever in collecting the objective data that informs key management decisions on future direction and, in the eyes of some, salvation. The data collected by our small and extremely dedicated biology team - from electro-fishing surveys, scale reading, fish counters, bird counts, trout traps, acoustic tracking, invertebrate counts, adult salmon exploitation surveys, egg counts, and smolt traps, to name just a few of the methods employed - is of the highest quality in the country, and allows us to make evidence-based management decisions. This solid base of data (which started in the 1990s) now has real value: not only does it increase our understanding of Tweed’s fish populations, it also provides the information necessary to underpin applications for change which assist in convincing Government and other agencies to implement, and allow us to action, the most appropriate policies on our river. 2017 included a huge amount of planning work, headaches, and not a little heartache, to commence the installation of two new facilities on tributaries in the Tweed system. Whilst not completed during the year, much preparatory work was undertaken to install a new VAKI fish counting system on the Ettrick Water near Selkirk. The Tweed Foundation is indebted to the Scottish Government for providing an extremely significant contribution to this project, without which we would not have been able to take it forward. More than ever, we need sound data on our Spring Salmon stocks, and being able to install a new fish counter - the first of its size and type in the UK - is a huge and necessary step in enabling this important information to be gathered once again after a gap of nine years. There is a progress report on Page 21, and you can follow fish counter updates via our Facebook posts. The other new facility is on the Gala Water, a tributary with a predominantly summer Salmon population. The Foundation has run a fish counter here for 10 years and is now about to build an adjacent smolt trap so that we can monitor the population leaving the tributary as well as that returning to it. As the fish counter is the only way in which fish can ascend the Skinworks cauld, this facility will allow us to monitor the entire population -in and out: an incredibly useful resource. Future years will allow us to expand the trap’s use for other studies. Some of this data will also link with our work on piscivorous birds, providing more information on the interaction between fish movement and the accummulations of their predators in specific areas. All exceedingly exciting, and vital, stuff! One of The Tweed Foundation’s basic remits is education and, along with the River Tweed Commission, we are providing more information on our work, including regular updates to all the fishing huts, hotels and tackle shops in the area, as well as making these available online. Whilst the outlook in fishing terms may not look that bright at present, trust needs to be placed, more than ever, in the tremendous biological resource that we have which will help ensure that we reach the right decisions to take the river forward. Fay Hieatt www.tweedfoundation.org.uk 3 Environment Temperature Monitoring Rationale: With forecasts of changes in rainfall, flow Marine Scotland Science (MSS) temperature dataloggers are patterns and temperatures, it is important to try and now in place in various parts of the Tweed catchment (not forecast impacts on fish habitats, so that any step to including the Whiteadder) and the data, downloaded by The mitigate these changes can be identified. Tweed Foundation twice a year, is accumulating. Map 1: Maximum predicted temperature for the Tweed catchment 2003 - 2014 (excluding the River Whiteadder) The national network has sites for a very wide range of altitudes The pattern is broadly what would be expected, with the and aspects (stream direction in relation to the path of the sun) coldest streams in the highest parts of the catchment. While it and other factors, so predictions for the Tweed area are not might have been expected that the Leet (L on Map 1) would made using only information from Tweed temperature loggers be a warmer stream, it is a bit of a surprise to see the Kale (K), (the black dots on Map1). One recent set of predictions made Oxnam (O) and upper Bowmont (B) with similar temperatures. from this data is of where the river has been hottest within the The Ettrick (E), Gala (G) and Leader (LR) appear to have a cooling years 2003-2014. influence on the main channel as does, more surprisingly, the Till (T) on the lowest down part of the river. National Scotland River Temperature Monitoring Network (SRTMN) network http://www.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Salmon-Trout-Coarse/Freshwater/Monitoring/temperature 4 www.tweedfoundation.org.uk Fish Populations North Shields, where Drift Net Licences are held The North-east England Drift Rationale: The movements and fates of Tweed Nets and Tweed Catches salmon at sea have always been poorly known due the There has been a long history of controversy over the effect difficulties of finding and identifying them at sea, but if of these nets on Tweed catches, but in one respect, they have a fully rounded picture of their state and of the impacts been useful to Tweed management in that their catches have on them identified, much better information is required. given information on Tweed stocks that is not affected by Collection and collation of data on exploitation of angling conditions or effort. However, it was only after the buy- Tweed Salmon south of the Tweed is one strand of this. out in 2002 reduced the number of Northumberland drift net licences from 60 down to 14, that the relationship between their reported catches and those of the Tweed actually appeared, as shown in Graph 1. The catches are lagged by one month for comparability, so the drift net catches out at sea are for July and August and for the lower Tweed, August and September. However, this strong positive correlation between drift net and lower Tweed rod catches which appeared after 2002, disappeared in 2014 (Graph 2).