River Glyde Visit Castlebellingham 7 Dec 2019

Saturday 7th December 2019

Water Resources Management Training in Co. Louth

What a great turn out on the River Glyde (Castlebellingham) yesterday for our small streams assessment demonstration! The group of some 38 committed individuals included seven super enthusiastic and very knowledgeable budding young freshwater biologists. What a great morning.

The group examining the trays containing the macroinvertebrate sampled from the River Glyde in Castlebellingham.

Ken points out some interesting creatures.

Martin cleaning a demonstration sample just taken from the River Glyde.

Ken outlines how the system works – mayflies (3-tails), stoneflies (2-tails), Caddis flies (cased and uncased) on the sensitive side and then snails, worms, true flies, leeches and flatworms on the tolerant-to-pollution side.

Scoring up a sample – showing how to identify the various groups of sensitive species against the tolerant species and calculating the balance between them to come up with a final score that tells a lot about the condition of the river or stream.

A successful kick sample!

An empty shell of the freshwater swan mussel, *Anodonta* – probably washed down from the slower flowing reaches upstream of Castlebellingham.

Our treasure trove of invertebrates included: a large variety of mayflies, cased and uncased caddis, Simulium (blackfly), water slaters, shrimp and shells of the highly conserved swan mussel, Anodonta cygnea. Hopefully this indicates a solid population of these increasing rare and long lived creatures further upstream. Many of yesterdays’ participants are involved in actively planning exciting new freshwater awareness programmes in County Louth.

Don’t forget next week’s important meeting of the Dundalk Bay Rivers Association in the Creative Spark Complex , Dundalk, on Sunday 15th December 2019 – from 10am-1pm – #dundalkbayriversassociation

(also they have more photos from this event on the River Glyde at Castlebellingham )