27/12/2025
Christmas musings....
The stocking work we carried out certainly put thousands more adult salmon in the river. I was amazed at how many fish came back. I didn't expect it to work well and as a scientist that's a very healthy state of mind to have. Open minded scepticism if you will 🤔
Science is so often about being proved wrong and when you are, its important to look at the data and try to understand why. It's how things move forward, or certainly should be.
We stocked good numbers of pre smolt part into the River Laver and Kex Beck in Autum 2016. I asked Mick Benson to keep an eye out for returning adults in 2019. He found them jumping at weirs and then found redds in December. We surveyed the following year and found juveniles. The first time that salmon had been recorded at those sites. They were right up to Laverton on the Laver. This to me was the the most obvious proof that salmon stocking can work and be used to pump prime systems with salmon. You would have thought the EA would have been delighted but sadly not🙄
We are going to be posting the latest scientific data relating to salmon stocking here over the next few months and I think it will surprise people how well conservation salmon stocking can actually work
With the right conditions, hatcheries can play a crucial role in mitigating declining salmon runs.
