I thought I would check in to see how the Kids and the Kelvin project is doing over at there site.
Quite frankly I think it looks great fun – he has somehow managed to convince the Teachers that keeping a hatchery in the classroom and then releasing the fish into feeder streams is a good idea. In fact it is a great idea – I want to know why I was never allowed to do stuff like that when I was at school – at school for me it was all SRA (do you remember that?) and 50 lines for gazing out the window thinking of fish.
I think I have mentioned this before however it is worth pointing it out again. Willie Yeomans and his crazy kids team are educating lots of kids around the Kelvin catchment area about the river and how good it is..
Here he is about to drive these school kids into the river to do a bit of his science work.
I wish there was something like that I could do – hang on, there is – it is called the Angler’s Monitoring Initiative for the River Kelvin. Remember I used to go on about the hatch chart for the river well here is a step towards it and we urgently need volunteers.
The AMI was set up in 2007 by the Riverfly Partnership and has been adopted by a growing number of angling associations and local groups across Scotland. The idea is that once some anglers get some riverfly ID training, they can then apply a simple monitoring technique to record the presence (or absence) of 8 invertebrate groups. This is good for 3 main reasons:
– Flags up issues with water quality and alerting the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) to carry out further investigation
– Acts as a deterrent to incidental polluters
– Generates long term biological data for our river that can be used to monitor change
We will be having a meeting pretty soon to sort out who wants to help coordinate the Kelvin AMI and carry out monitoring work. Anyone who wants to undertake the monitoring work will take part in a one-day workshop probably sometime in mid-October. Monitoring involves getting some sampling kit (net, tray etc) and then identifying the invertebrates from a river bed sample. This process would be carried out frequently but flexibly throughout the year at the same sites to help build up a picture of the river health. It is not a massive time commitment, so if you would like to find out more, and get clued up on riverflies then come along to the meeting. As soon as I know the date I will post it here and on the Fishkelvin site.
Will let you know soon.
Like real soon.
Possibly in the next few days.
Possibly.
These guys who give their time to teaching kids about the river, and the life in it, deserve a medal. Well done for bigging it up (did I just write that?)
Thanks for commenting Duncan – aye they do a great job however even though it is a good cause they are partly funded by just about everyone and anyone – the kelvin one is kinda special as it is funded by the Kelvin leader – I am not sure if it will happen again next year!
Tomorrow evening (Wednesday 27th) we have the monthly fly tying night at the Islay Inn on Argyle Street, 7.30pm. This time we also have Nick Underwood (Kelvin Catchment Officer) attending to talk to us about the anglers monitoring initiative. We are looking for volunteers to take part in this project. If you are interested in monitoring the health of the river, and can spare a little time to survey (I believe it’s once a month), then please come along for further information. See you there.
Paul