We are working in collaboration with the licensed salmon nets in Poole Harbour to study the survival of salmon that are released from net fisheries. Fish have been both PIT tagged and tagged with acoustic pinger tags and released at the netting site.
The research is in its early stages but we have already detected one of the released fish at East Stoke. As some of the fish could be going up the unmonitored river Piddle, which also enters Poole Harbour upstream of the netting site, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions as yet.
This new area of research for us opens up exciting possibilities of understanding the behaviour of adult fish in the lower river and the influence of temperature and discharge on their passage through the lower river.