Catch up with SEG
Autumn 2023 has seen another busy season for the members of SEG, let’s see what everyone’s been up to.
Johan and Madeleine spent the last week in the beautiful city of Evora, Portugal where WGTRUTTA members gathered for their biannual meeting. The group had the opportunity to reflect on all that was achieved during the last three years of WGTRUTTA2 and make plans for WGTRUTTA3. They were also lucky enough to get a chance to visit Campelo Aquaculture facility, where fascinating research is being conducted on wild-reared trout.
Back in Sweden adult sea trout are returning to our study site in Billdal, ready for the spawning season. We have installed a trap to count and measure all individuals, as well as this a subsample of adults have been PIT tagged and we will track their migration upstream in fine detail. In October we tagged more juveniles ready for the spring migration bringing our total number of tagged individuals in this small system since the MAPS project began up to almost 1000.
Lots of other exciting research is going on in the group which now has 6 masters students working on their thesis projects. Ali Khari is investigating pressures on sea trout across their natural range in Europe working closely with Katarina Magnusson from SLU. Another project with a European focus is Shirin Nozad’s who is analysing secondary production in streams from Norway, Sweden, France and Portugal and linking this to juvenile trout. Chandika Nuwansiri is working within the NOBROOK project looking at stable isotope signatures in brown trout after invasive brook trout removal. Mobeen Munir is researching brown trout immune response to freshwater pearl mussel infestation. Evelina Olsen spent the summer in Austria working with Wassercluster Lunz to broaden our understanding of brook and brown trout interactions. Aryan Kaura will track adult upstream migration in Haga å, seeing how individuals distribute within the stream. Some interesting results are coming in already so watch this space.
Finally, SEG has recruited our youngest member with Benedikte welcoming a baby girl in October! Massive congratulations from the rest of the team!