THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

quite happily, but that would not be the
case as evidenced by checking
individuals and populations for signs of
FA, which as has already been said is
stress induced, which clearly
demonstrates that they do feel under
pressure.
Sewage fungus, stressed environment
Choosing to live in a polluted stressful
environment is not the same as having
the ability to do so when forced to. Some
fish can do it, and none better than the
humble three spined stickleback
Gasterosteus aculeatus which can be
found anywhere and everywhere from
the most pristine water quality
environments to the most grossly
polluted.
Some situations in fact where you might wonder how they survive in terms of available food, never
mind other factors, as many of the small organisms they feed on have long since been wiped out.
So much so, that when I was called to gather evidence for prosecution cases for the Environment
Agency, if we found dead sticklebacks in the mortality mix, we knew we had something particularly
nasty and serious to deal with, as these hardy little fish are usually always the last to go under.
My Ph. D research was to explore the potential to use FA as a tool for quantifying environmental stress
in sub-lethal situations, and to see if there was any sort of meaningful correlation between the degree
of that FA, and the none natural sources of stress that might be causing it. In other words, did it have
any potential value as a monitoring tool for use in situations where more conventional methods simply
weren't appropriate.
To understand the implications of this, you first need to understand how conventional routine aquatic
monitoring and incident response is undertaken by organisations like the Environment Agency.
This is done in two distinct yet
complimentary ways. On the one
hand there is chemical monitoring
such as the analysis of water samples
to determine what pollutants might be
present, while on the other, biological
monitoring using macro-invertebrates
to determine both the acute as well as
the chronic environmental stresses
present in rivers and streams, both as
part of a routine program, and at the
time of major incidents, to provide
immediate before and after the event
information to present to the courts.
Chemical sampling means filling a
bottle and requesting either a specific
or a suite of analytical tests be carried
out. The draw back there is that unless
Biologist kick sampling
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