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    River Habitats for Coarse Fish: How Fish Use Rivers and How We Can Help Them
    River Habitats for Coarse Fish: How Fish Use Rivers and How We Can Help Them
    River Habitats for Coarse Fish: How Fish Use Rivers and How We Can Help Them
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    River Habitats for Coarse Fish: How Fish Use Rivers and How We Can Help Them

    By Dr. Mark Everard

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    About this ebook

    This illustrated guide describes the many ways that coarse fish species depend upon the diversity of habitats in river systems and considers how this dependence changes throughout the stages of their lives - from spawning and eggs, through to the juvenile and adult stages- and with changing seasons and river conditions. This knowledge is important if we are to understand the many population bottlenecks and the variety of coarse fish species that have resulted from historic changes to our rivers. It is also important if we are to manage rivers positively to protect and improve the vitality of coarse fisheries - a process that will also benefit the wider wildlife community with which coarse fish are interdependent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOld Pond Books
    Release dateJul 17, 2015
    ISBN9781910456408
    River Habitats for Coarse Fish: How Fish Use Rivers and How We Can Help Them

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      Book preview

      River Habitats for Coarse Fish - Dr. Mark Everard

      River Habitats for Coarse Fish

      How Fish Use Rivers and How We Can Help Them

      Mark Everard

      Contents

      Title Page

      River Habitats for Coarse Fish: An Introduction

      How Coarse Fish Use River Habitats

      Bottlenecks and Pressures

      Taking Action

      Practical Fixes

      Why Fish Matter

      Epilogue: Rivers with Ragged Edges

      Acknowledgements

      Appendices

      Index

      Copyright

      River Habitats for Coarse Fish: An Introduction

      AFAIR AMOUNT OF guidance has been produced over the years on habitat management for salmon and trout fisheries. Look no further than the Wild Trout Trust’s excellent Wild Trout Survival Guide as an exemplar. Yet coarse fish in rivers remain something of an ugly duckling. This is despite the fact that many more people fish and live near rivers that support predominantly coarse fish populations. Furthermore, coarse fish populations are every bit the indicators of rivers in good health that salmonid species are generally acknowledged to be.

      Healthy and balanced coarse fish populations are also just as much threatened as their silver and spotted brethren. Whether we look at pollution, over-abstraction, habitat loss, invasive alien species, excessive predation or a host of other pressures, coarse fish stocks are vulnerable to all we throw at them in the name of (often unsympathetic) development.

      All of these wider pressures can be significant, and require attention. But such is the impoverished, pressurised nature of contemporary landscapes that a paucity of necessary habitat can often constrain river ecosystems, including their fish populations. Habitat improvement can also go some way towards compensating for some of the broader problems that arise from low flows and some forms of pollution, and can offer refuges from increasing levels of predation in river systems. Furthermore, habitat is something that we can all do something about, whilst often the best we can accomplish in addressing the other major pressures on our river systems is to support campaigns by regulators and larger voluntary organisations.

      This guide focuses primarily on the role of habitat in sustaining the life cycles of fish and supporting river health. From this initial overview, the guide then turns to practical measures that concerned anglers and angling organisations, fishery owners and rivers trusts, conservationists and conservation bodies, and the wider public can do to protect or improve river habitats for coarse fish.

      This is because fish matter. You really don’t need to be a keen angler or a fish biologist to appreciate these often overlooked but iconic players in river ecosystems. This is because some fish species have direct conservation value, but is also because all fish species play important roles in the delicate balance of nature. This includes serving as prey for herons, kingfishers, otters and other, perhaps more charismatic (at least in the eyes of many of the general public), species within river ecosystems. Thriving fisheries also speak of healthy water, which is cheaper to treat on its way to our taps and safer to paddle and swim in, and of diverse ecotourism and other benefits to fishers and non-fishers like. So, when fish are absent, we all know instinctively that something is wrong.

      This short pictorial guide is thus a long time overdue, and also constitutes a manifesto of the importance of river habitats for coarse fish and the wide benefits they convey to society. I hope it is picked up and used by as many people as possible. Members of the UK’s Angling Trust and the rivers trust movement, as well as wildlife trusts, fishing clubs and other fishery interests, constitute obvious reader groups, as do regulators and the owners of riverbanks. But I hope that many more people will realise that they are already more empowered than they had previously thought, and that by becoming a little more informed they will be emboldened to take into their own hands the rehabilitation of the precious yet vulnerable resource that is rivers and their coarse fish populations.

      How Coarse Fish Use River Habitats

      TO UNDERSTAND HOW coarse fish use habitats, it is necessary first to think about the driving forces of their behaviour. In simple terms, this boils down to three principal variables, which I define in my 2006 book The Complete Book of the Roach as ‘the three Fs’. These are feeding, flight and reproduction. (If you don’t understand the last one, ask a friend, but the word ‘fecundity’ serves well enough!) Throughout this guide, I will return to how these three principal variables influence the way fish use habitats throughout their lives.

      Life cycles of British freshwater fishes

      All species of British freshwater fish are egg-layers, though this is by no means true of all of the world’s fishes, as some families release free-swimming young. The time of year at which Britain’s freshwater fishes lay their eggs, their general spawning strategy, and the nursery and refuge needs of juveniles vary between species and families. The three Fs are a useful framework within which to consider how important the diversity of river habitats is in enabling the varied fish fauna of rivers to complete their life cycles and to thrive as part of healthy river ecosystems.

      Spawning substrates can range from flushed gravels, generally in shallow water and entailing upstream migration, to submerged aquatic vegetation, which can include soft vegetation or tree roots, and hard submerged surfaces, such as rocks and tree boughs.

      The large majority of British freshwater fishes exhibit no brood care once the eggs are laid, relying on a high fecundity strategy to enable a sufficient number of individuals to survive to reproductive age. Significant exceptions here are the males of both British freshwater species of stickleback – the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and the nine- or ten-spined stickleback (Pungitius pungitius) – which build nests out of pieces of soft vegetation into which they attract mates to lay their eggs, the male fish then demonstrating brood care until the fry are free swimming and able to disperse to fend for themselves. Another example is the

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