Mosspig: Forsinard farewells

Well the memory card has recovered from its aquatic adventure and I'm now able to bring you exciting photos from the first 'Fish Day' on Tuesday! Woo yay!

We were joined by Colin Bean from SNH who was up to train the RSPB staff in how to catch and anesthetise brown trout in the reserve lochs for a mark and recapture project to get an idea of fish numbers. There were 7 of us which was just as well as the seine net we were casting was 40 meters long!

Argo beats the boggy ground

Equipment included:

Argo 8x8 for getting the stuff across the bog
inflatable dinghy + oars
scales, forceps, scissors, measuring board, bags etc
40m seine net
gill net
various small nets
4 big dustbins and several small buckets
recording equipment
waders, drysuits and lifejackets

As you'd imagine it was a full on job - the gill net was set up first and left out all day while we did four casts of the seine. The first two produced 1 trout in each which wasn't that great but better than nothing, then nowt in the third, however on the fourth and last cast a mighty haul of 60-odd brown trout were landed and needed to be processed fast.

"We're gonna need a bigger boat"

Smiley happy fishermen

Ready for piscine action

Colin, Mark and Graham paying out the net

Mark and Claire pulling it back in

First catch of the day

...and they kept coming

Unfortunately because it was a fairly sunny day the water temperature was quite high and the fish in the bins were not too happy even with the oxygen pumps going, so sad to say we had a few casualties before we got them processed. However today we had caught 51 and we had far fewer fatalities as the production line was much slicker! Fish were placed in a bucket of dental anesthetic and when they were sufficiently woozy were then measured, weighed, had their adipose fin clipped and scales taken before being placed in a recovery tank and finally released. I might get some of the photos of the fin snipping and today's shenanigans to show you at a later date.

Going back to Saturday I had got the train up to Thurso for the day to have a toddle about and see what I could see. There wasn't much in the way of beachcombing finds but I did spot this graffiti -

Original Banksy in Thurso?

I've no idea if it's genuine or not. I did find a whole undamaged urchin shell and was planning to take it home but it was far too brittle and ended up breaking in my pocket.

Tomorrow is my last day at Forsinard Flows reserve and I'm a wee bit sad to leave to be honest, even though the work has been tough at times I've had an enjoyable stay, probably got a bit fitter and met some great people. I've already decided I'll be back next year and hopefully help out on some more invert and fish work!