Every year we study juvenile salmon and sea trout smolts on their way to sea, catching them using a Rotary Screw Trap (pictured) at our East Stoke field station. Last night saw a good start of this year’s programme with 5 sea trout smolts and 7 salmon smolts caught overnight (these numbers will grow over the coming weeks as more and more fish make their way to sea).
Two of the salmon were also fish we had already measured and tagged as parr last September. Catching and measuring these fish again has given us another piece of invaluable data to inform our ongoing research into salmon survival, such as our newest PhD position.