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Posted: 28-07-2013 08:32 Post subject:

Somerset canal weeds to be eaten up by 1,000 weevils

Scientists have dropped 1,000 weed-eating weevils into a Somerset canal to tackle an aquatic fern which is causing problems for fish and other wildlife.
The small insects are 2mm-long and were released into the Bridgwater and Taunton canal to tackle the problem of the invasive plant azolla.

Richard Haine of the Canal and River Trust said: "They breed quickly and eat azolla, so should be effective."
He said they would monitor the weevils' progress over the next few weeks.

Mr Haine added: "Azolla might look attractive, but it's actually a serious threat to water wildlife across the country.
"With the warmer weather there's a danger that it can completely take over sections of the canal, so the weevils are our pre-emptive strike."

He said the species of weevil (Stenopelmus rufinasus) which they put into the canal at Kings Lock only eat this particular water weed, which is native to North America.
The plant multiplies rapidly and can cover the surface with thick mats which then reduces light and oxygen levels in the water.
This can result in the deaths of fish and wildlife, and affect boaters and anglers use of the canal.

He explained that individually the creatures would eat a small amount, but that they breed very quickly and were capable of clearing entire lakes "within a matter of weeks".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-23476110

Posted: 28-07-2013 15:14 Post subject: WWII: TheAftermath!

Metal spikes removed from Devon beach

Coiled metal spikes which are believed to date back to World War II have been removed from a Devon beach.
The spikes are thought to be anti-tank devices, according to Shawn Corin the senior ranger on Northam Burrows.
The coiled spikes were erected at the location to stop invading tanks from advancing off the beach and inland, Mr Corin said.
Some of the recovered coiled spikes will be given to the North Devon Museum in Barnstaple.

Mr Corin said: "The spikes were first exposed back in 2007 but before we had a chance to remove any, the Pebble Ridge had swallowed them up again. This time we've managed to remove the majority of them - about two tonnes worth.
"The coils would have ripped off the tracks from any tanks, rendering them immobile."

Northam Burrows Country Park is a 253 hectare grassy coastal plain at the mouth of the Taw and Torridge estuary, which includes the Pebble Ridge, a bank of cobbles which is part of Westward Ho! beach.

Gaye Tabor, Torridge District Council's lead member for the natural and built environment, said: "It's fascinating the secrets Northam Burrows is still withholding from us.
"It's such a wonderful natural resource for Torridge, enjoyed by people of all ages, and never fails to amaze."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-23481422

Posted: 28-07-2013 16:16 Post subject:

Posted: 28-07-2013 18:19 Post subject:

They'll probably be big enough to take your arm off.

Posted: 11-08-2013 07:30 Post subject:

Eels to be helped back into Lake Windermere

Critically endangered eels are to be helped back into Lake Windermere, Cumbria, where they have not been seen in significant numbers for 30 years.
The European eel has seen a huge decline, partly because of barriers to migration including dams and weirs on rivers and flood defences.

Two chutes - or "eel passes" - are being put in the River Leven to enable access into England's largest lake.
Conservationists hope to get numbers back to 40% of those seen in the 1980s.
Over the past three decades, there has been a 95% decrease in the number of European eels due to migration barriers as well as overfishing and loss of habitat.

The eels begin their lives in the Sargasso Sea, near Bermuda, before swimming thousands of miles across the Atlantic and heading up UK rivers to grow.
They later make the return journey to spawn.
While there were once thousands in Windermere, they are now rarely seen in the lake.

The new passes are being installed by the Co-operative Group and the South Cumbria Rivers Trust in an effort to persuade eels back into the waters of Windermere.
They are made of special bristly boards, which will allow the young fish to slither over obstacles on their way into the lake.

"The purpose of the bristle board is it gives the eels, who move in a sinewy fashion, the ability to purchase as they're coming through it," South Cumbria Rivers Trust manager Pete Evoy told BBC News.
"We'll feed some water down there - we'll have some pump water coming down these bristle boards.

"As they gain entrance from the river at the bottom, they can work their way up though here, through the entire pass when it's constructed, and over the top of the crest and into safe water at the top - and continue their journey upstream."

Co-operative Group sustainable development manager Chris Shearlock told BBC News: "The population's probably only 5% of the size it was in the 1980s.
"But the idea is to get it back to something like 30-40% of where it was and that will take decades so that's the point about starting this process now."

The two groups plan to install eel passes in a number of rivers in north-west England, including several places in Lancashire's Lune Estuary and sites near Kendal, Cumbria.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23653784

Posted: 04-09-2013 07:14 Post subject:

Bagehot
The parable of the Clyde
The devastation of a fishery shows the idiocy of much environmental politics
Aug 31st 2013 |From the print edition

WHEN Bagehot’s grandfather built a house in Carradale, a village on the Firth of Clyde, around 20 tubby fishing smacks operated from its tiny harbour. It was the 1960s and the fishing had never been so easy. Equipped with diesel engines, sonar fish finders and heavy trawl mesh, the boats were scooping up herring by the shoal. They employed over 100 men, from almost every village household. You would see them from the house, steaming home across the Kilbrannan Sound with a confetti of white seagulls over their bows.

For two decades the bonanza on Scotland’s west coast continued. An occupation that had been seasonal and modestly profitable became year-round and lucrative. Baskets of herring put televisions into fishermen’s cottages and cars outside their doors. But fish, like oil and gas, with which Scotland’s continental shelf is also well-endowed, are not in unlimited supply.

By the 1980s the herring had become scarce. Yet the tides that make the Clyde perilous for mariners also stir up nutrients, making it rich in biodiversity. So the fishermen turned to other species—saith, cod, plaice and sole—assisted by bigger engines and new dredgers. The Clyde fleet, based in Carradale, Girvan and other small ports along the Firth’s 100km stretch, could now fish deeper, for longer, and even in rocky places.

Politicians, who had once tried to husband the Clyde’s bounty, helped the slaughter. During the late 19th century trawling had been banned in most of the Clyde to combat the effects of overfishing. But later governments reversed that logic. As the trawlers fished out unprotected parts of the Clyde, they opened the protected parts. In 1984 the last serious protection, a ban on trawling within three nautical miles of the shore, was lifted by the courts. By the turn of the century there were scarcely any adult shoals left in the Clyde. These days, excluding a summer flush of mackerel, it is hard to find any big fish at all. Hugely reduced, the Clyde fleet now scrapes the seabed for scallops and prawns, a difficult enterprise that is destroying the habitat upon which hopes of regeneration depend. Only five small boats operate out of Carradale, employing a dozen men. “In just 20 years,” remarked an old fisherman in Girvan, “we knackered the Clyde.”

This is one of Britain’s biggest environmental disasters of recent times. But it is not widely known. Until 2010, when two marine biologists predicted, on the basis of historic catch data, that the Clyde was about to become Britain’s first “ecological desert”, it was scarcely mentioned in the national press. Even then the Clyde won no political champions—such as the 101 Conservative MPs who wrote to the prime minister last year to condemn unsightly wind turbines. Nor has the devastation sparked public protests such as those against hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”, a technique for producing oil and gas) that forced an energy company called Cuadrilla to stop drilling in Sussex this month. Why?

Because the damage is underwater, and what the eye doesn’t see greens don’t often bleat about. That is why the global crisis of overfishing and marine pollution stirs less outrage than, say, the clearing of the rainforest. Yet the main reason is stupid politics. Evil or Very Mad

Even Tory backbenchers cannot think the view-disturbing effect of a windmill as serious as the devastation of one of Britain’s most productive marine ecosystems. What passes for environmental protest over wind turbines is really NIMBY-ism on behalf of a few influential constituents. Nor, if they are serious, can greens maintain that fracking is a great evil. The technique has been used in oil and gas production for decades without causing the serious water pollution or earthquakes it is accused of. Environmental protest over fracking is really a fight over something else: either the greenhouse-gas emissions that all hydrocarbon production leads to, which is a legitimate worry, or the capitalist system that produces firms like Cuadrilla, which is not. These are illustrations of how dilettantish much of what passes for environmental protest truly is. The Clyde is a more tragic case.

The Clyde’s remote fisher folk—the hardy, easily romanticised agents of the Firth’s devastation—are a less attractive target for greens than energy firms. They are also a constituency local politicians do not wish to annoy. So no government or green has tried hard to stop the rapine. And the current Scottish government, run by the Scottish National Party, is especially reluctant. It has strong ties to the fishing industry, which is why, hoping to disprove the marine biologists’ claims, it commissioned a rival study of the fishery. Published last year, this judged the phrase “ecological desert” an overstatement; yet it agreed that there were hardly any fish in the Clyde worth catching. Amazingly, the fisheries minister, Richard Lochhead, suggested this vindicated his government’s support for the destructive scraping and dredging. Rolling Eyes

The trawlermen are formidable. Even as Carradale’s fleet shrank, and the mounds of fishing nets vanished from the harbour, they tended to rebut any suggestion that the Clyde was in trouble and they were the cause. This was, for decades, a truth rarely spoken in the village. Even now it is uttered mainly by old fishermen, made honest by the dying of a beloved industry.

Fishing, for as long as anyone can remember, was more than an occupation in Carradale. The community was founded on it. Youths went to sea in their uncles’ boats, formed ring-netting pairs with their neighbours, married one another’s sisters and celebrated by drinking and singing songs about herring. Support for the fishermen was bolstered by a desire to preserve these happy traditions. But how misguided that was.

Carradale is shrinking. Its young folk are leaving; one of the five boats is crewed by Latvians for want of local labour. “Last year was a bad year, 18 deaths and the rest of us ageing,” was how an old fisherman greeted Bagehot on his return to the village. Few sing about herring these days. Nobody sings about prawns.

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21584322-devastation-fishery-shows-idiocy-much-environmental-politics-parable

Posted: 17-09-2013 08:29 Post subject:

Posted: 17-09-2013 13:31 Post subject:

Now the weevils will climb out of the canal and be eaten by locals.

Posted: 17-09-2013 19:52 Post subject:

When confronted by two weevils, always choose the lesser of the two.

Posted: 17-09-2013 22:15 Post subject:

Weevil defeat them.

Posted: 02-10-2013 08:51 Post subject:

Young eels released into Blagdon Lake

Some 25,000 eels have been released into a North Somerset reservoir as part of a national project to boost numbers.
Eventually 100,000 eels will be released in UK waterways, including in Shropshire, east of England and Wales.

Eel numbers are falling as they cannot reach their breeding habitats due to man-made barriers in their way.
Andrew Kerr, from the Sustainable Eels Group, said: "You want to see the eel doing well and prospering as it tells us how well we are managing our water."

Mr Kerr added: "What we've had to do is catch them in hand nets and then put them in tanks.
"Sometimes we immediately move them on past the barriers but on this occasion we've taken 100,000 and we've grown them on from two inches long, to four, five, six inches long."

UK Glass Eels used licensed fishermen who caught the baby eels in hand nets during the spring tides along the River Severn earlier this year.
The first batch was released into Blagdon Lake on Monday.
This site was chosen as it has shallow water, lots of reeds for protection from predators like birds, and plentiful food.
The young eels will then grow and mature over the next 15 to 20 years as they live low down in the water.
Once mature they will return to the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic to breed and spawn.

A total of £45,000 is being spent on the project organised by the Bristol and Avon Rivers Trust, the Sustainable Eel Group and UK Glass Eels.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24345652

Posted: 02-10-2013 17:50 Post subject:

If one of them grows giant, what do we call it? Blaggie?

Posted: 02-10-2013 21:21 Post subject:

How will they get out of the lake, then?

Posted: 03-10-2013 00:02 Post subject: