Case study:Water of Dye Fish Pass Project
Project overview
Status | Complete |
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Project web site | |
Themes | Fisheries |
Country | Scotland |
Main contact forename | Nick |
Main contact surname | Elbourne |
Main contact user ID | User:NickRRC |
Contact organisation | River Restoration Centre |
Contact organisation web site | |
Partner organisations | River Dee Trust |
Parent multi-site project | |
This is a parent project encompassing the following projects |
No |
Project summary
The Water of Dye is a tributary of the Water of Feugh - itself a tributary of the River Dee. 15km along the 26km length of the Dye are two weirs - the upper acting as a partial impoundment to supply a nearby drinking water storage reservoir and the lower Crump weir acting as a flow accelerator for flow monitoring purposes.
Fisheries surveys conducted between 1997 and 2006 showed that the weirs were acting as significant barriers to upstream Atlantic salmon migration - cutting off 11km of good spawning and nursery habitat.
In 2008, two fish passes were installed on the two weirs. This initially involved constructing pre-weirs below the pre-existing weir structures, in order to raise tailwater levels to ease fish passage. In addition, the upper weir also had a 'step-pool' pass installed, as the weir was deemed to be particularly steep for fish passage. This allowed to fish to climb the weir in two 'jumps'.
In order to determine the ecological success of the project, the River Dee Trust conducted pre/post-restoration electro-fishing surveys, to track any changes in fish abundance above and below the weirs. These surveys determined the following:
- Statistically significant increase in salmon parr above the weir in 2010 and 2011, compared with pre-restoration baseline.
- In 2011, salmon parr numbers u/s of weir were found to be not statistically different to abundances d/s for the first time - indicating that the fish pass had been successful in promoting free u/s passage for spawning.
- Decline in trout fry and parr above weir following fish pass installation, however the control site d/s showed no significant decline. Possibly due to outcompetition for habitat and territory by salmon, which are naturally far more suited to the habitat. A similar issue was seen following fish pass installation on the Tweed.
Monitoring surveys and results
Lessons learnt
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Catchment
Subcatchment
Site
Project background
Cost for project phases
Reasons for river restoration
Measures
MonitoringHydromorphological quality elements
Biological quality elements
Physico-chemical quality elements
Any other monitoring, e.g. social, economic
Monitoring documents
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Supplementary InformationEdit Supplementary Information
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