Riverfly Monitoring: Month 1!

Me kick sampling in the Allander today

Back in May I attended a River Invertebrate Monitoring Workshop hosted by Clyde River Foundation at Brannock High School. The Riverfly Partnership are the brains behind this citizen science  monitoring scheme which aims to protect the quality of rivers, and add to the understanding of invertebrate ecology. It is mostly aimed at anglers, as they spend a lot of their time on or in rivers (as you might expect!) and already have knowledge of the different families of flies and how changes in their numbers can be an indicator of changing water quality. When a survey is carried out, the data is submitted online and is forwarded onto the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). This is happening all over the country with the aim to act quickly when issues arise and hopefully deter incidental polluters.

By regularly monitoring sites for 8 key species, any declines can quickly be seen and act as an indicator of a pollution event on the river. As well as anglers, schools have also been taking part in riverfly surveys via CRF as part of their education and have been inputting results online along with other volunteers like me!

A striped ladybird joined us for lunch!

Today we found my site on the outskirts of Glasgow on the Allander water. It was a bit of an adventure trying to get down to the river itself but we found a decent spot and I strode out in my wellies with the pond net and kicked around for 3 minutes, zig-zagging across the water. We washed the net out into the large white tray and started poking around the murk with the turkey basters and teaspoons, transferring any wiggly mayflies, stoneflies, freshwater shrimps, caddisfly or olives to the sorting tray for counting. In the end we had:

• 1 cased Caddisfly
• 1 caseless Caddisfly
• 21 Blue Winged Olives
• 4 Flat bodied upwings
• 1 Olive
• 11 Stoneflies
• 2 Gammarus (Freshwater Shrimp)

It will be interesting to see the numbers next month, and for the rest of the year.
I apologise for the lack of pictures, we were too engrossed in the finding and sorting to remember to take more - next time I promise!

Freshwater mite (top) and a stonefly nymph (bottom)