We can now get a good coverage of monitoring points set up to act as an early warning of any potential water quality problems around Sheffield.

Group arrives at the community centre:


Introduction from Stuart Croft, our tutor for the day (Stuart did two consecutive courses to accommodate all the attendees - a full weekend's work)


The group takes to the river


Stuart takes us through our sampling technique paces


The group are let loose


The captured creatures are taken back to the community centre and pored over...identified...and counted.


The data from all sampling groups are entered


Many, many thanks to Stuart (who stayed up very late on Saturday to modify his slide presentation to better fit the Sunday sessions). As usual, his enthusiasm and willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty shone through.

Thanks also to John Blewitt for co-ordinating and also for getting the ace buffet in for the attendees!

When REF started theirs we were out bugging with our own kids first week, makes for a popular parent (briefly), have sprite already located the sample sites (high risk areas) as like the Erewash I suspect the Don could do with 300sites . The REF decided March to November to prevent freezing our nuts off, but I suspect the Sheffield possy will sample a full 12 months .

Good luck to all at Sprite with their Riverfly project, maybe we could all arrange a mass get together or something in the future - Festival

Mick

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"I will give him seven feet of English ground, or as much more as he may be taller than other men"
http://derbyshireonthefly.blogspot.com/

Sounds good to me Mick.

Well done all... how many SPRITE monitors are now trained, and monitoring how many sites?

Theo

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Well - there were two consecutive training days with SPRITE members attending both according to availability. There were also members from interest groups on the tribs and further upstream on the main river. All in all, I think 30 to 35 monitors were trained (I only attended the Saturday session). Our next task, through our regional co-ordinator, is to select our sampling sites and assign pairs of monitors to each. I hope that, across the catchment in and above Sheffield, we would be able to cover at least a dozen locations initially - with scope to recruit and train additional monitors as we go along.

We will deliberately target "gaps" in the location of routine E.A. monitoring sites so that we maximise our ability to detect problems.

On the Erewash we have 8 sewage plants with an awful track record in years gone by . Obviously these plants used up a majority of our sample sites still being considered the most serious threat on the river along with industrial estates etc. We only have 24 sites but fortunately most of our industrial towns are no longer doing there worst.

Paul - We could arrange a social day in January for a trip next year and I would have nipped up Sunday but we have REF social at Thornton.

I'll contact you in Jan when doing calender

Mick

__________________
"I will give him seven feet of English ground, or as much more as he may be taller than other men"
http://derbyshireonthefly.blogspot.com/