Legs Eleven

In-between both work projects and rain squalls, a very brief opportunity presented itself early morning to skive off work and head out to the Yorkshire Dales for the day instead. Looking online, a brief sunny Met Office forecast, as well as (rather amazingly given recent torrential rains), a low river level reading for the River Wharfe near Kettlewell, both confirmed this was an opportunity to be grasped. I took Mrs B an extra early morning cuppa in bed and she agreed to come for the ride.

So what better way to spend the day like a big kid paddling in my waders in the Wharfe - or to give it its scientific name, ‘kick sampling’ in the river to count the number of eight target river invertebrate species as part of a monthly volunteering exercise of ‘citizen science’ for something catchily called the Anglers’ Riverfly Monitoring Initiative.

Todays sample count at Buckden achieved a total score of ‘11’ which is higher than my average over 3 years - and so pretty good given all the recent floods in this upland part of a classic northern spate river. Essentially my trigger score is a ‘5’, which if it is ever as low as that, means there must have been some form of pollution event that has killed off these important target groups.

Todays classified results were as follows:

Cased Caddis: 4 (scores 1 point);
Caseless Caddis: 7 (scores 1);
Stoneflies: 13 (scores 2);
Olives: 120 (scores 3);
Blue-Winged Olives: 1 (scores 1);
Flat Bodied Heptageniidae: 110 (scores 3);
Mayfly: 0 (scores 0);
Freshwater Shrimp: 0 (scores 0).