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Water Temperature

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The fishery we seek to protect and enhance is a cold-water one; ‘global warming’ will have profound impacts on the distribution of e.g. salmonid fish, both generally and during their migration and breeding (in that different parts of a river system respond differently to climate because e.g. of shading).

The Trust is encouraging its volunteers to measure river temperature as often as they can – it is a very simple contribution to understanding the rate of change. In rivers such as the North Tyne, the operation of reservoirs has a big effect on water temperatures.

Perhaps a simple message to all anglers should be ‘keep a thermometer in your tackle bag’.

 

Hot Dry Summers

Seasonal returning adult salmon mortalities occur in the Tyne estuary in hot dry summers, when dissolved oxygen falls to very low levels.  From the investigations carried out by the Environment Agency and the NRA before it, the Environment Agency believes it can predict when these mortalities will happen. 

The Environment Agency cannot prevent fish dying but they can take limited actions to minimise the numbers and to offset the effects.  To do this, reasonably accurate assessment of the numbers of fish that die is required.  It will not be possible to collect (or even count) every dead fish but a network of people across the river will make it less likely that many fish are missed and will improve confidence in the number recorded.  Accurate recording now may help improvements in the future.

The Environment Agency implemented a 'River Watchers' programme in 2006.  A number of anglers and riparian owners patrol different sections of the upper estuary and lower main river and formally record and report dead fish.  This is to support the Agency's own actions to record the number of salmon dying in the estuary.  The data collected provides a better understanding of the number and distribution of fish deaths over the summer and aids the guiding of future stocking policies.