Smolt Conference Videos Available

WTT supported an international Conference in Berwick in March 2017 that considered challenges to and management of salmon and sea trout smolts, organised by the Atlantic Salmon Trust and Tweed Foundation. Whilst much of the talk was on salmon, some papers considered sea trout and there was much to learn for us trout people from those papers whose focus was on salmon. Excellent videos of all the talks are now available through AST and the Tweed Foundation: Smolt Conference — All video presentations now available to view

Viewing is highly recommended. To highlight a few, Johan Hojesjo gave an interesting talk on sea trout in Scandinavia, one snippet from Swedish studies being that trout are genetically differentiated into fjord groupings, rather than by specific river, providing great adaptability for fish to be able to use any of the rivers flowing into a particular fjord. Catch the detail of sea trout smolts migrating downstream with roach, presumably to maximise chances of survival. Niall Gauld tracked sea trout smolts around Loch Linnhe and showed their propensity to stay within sea lochs, making them vulnerable to development in those lochs (e.g. salmon farms). Niels Jepsen spoke on the impact of cormorant predation on salmon smolts (and other fish) in Danish rivers, producing some incredible (and terrifying) figures on the scale of the impact. His studies have shown 70% losses of a smolt run at one (redundant) weir and the effect of cold winters, when freezing of shorelines and lakes pushes cormorants onto rivers – some of his video footage simply has to be seen to be believed.