Summarizing this year's fieldwork in BOATS and PUFFINS

As the main bulk of field work in BOATS and PUFFINS is coming to a close, we look back at lovely days at Puddefjorden and Store Lungegårdsvannet which can only be described with one word: successful. This season kicked off in June by downloading data and changing batteries in all receivers. Also in June, we deployed three additional receivers to the Store Lungegård network.

After the summer break our fishing efforts began. This year, we weaved together fyke nets with only one collection net to make fykes with collection nets on both ends. The idea was to make each fyke more efficient, although this resulted in fewer fishing locations. Additionally, we repeated last year’s successful angling for pollocks.

Lastly, we implemented a more targeted attempt at catching lobster by using pots. From our efforts we’ve managed to tag 26 cod, 16 pollock and five lobsters. This is an increase from last year's efforts! Contrary to 2024, we saw very few recaptures from previous years. Almost all recaptures this year happened late season and were mostly fish that were tagged this season. Combined with the fact that we caught a lot of large cod this year, the lack of recaptures can signal cod moving into the restored ecosystem. This however is speculative, and will be investigated further in our research ;-)

With many ongoing projects, this season’s success would not have been possible without the invaluable support from an array of people. First and foremost, we want to thank PhD candidate Jessica Robichaud, who visited us from Carleton University in Ottawa this season. She assisted and exchanged experience with us every field day in August. We also want to, yet again, thank the LFI group for the support. A huge thank you to the 15 contributing employees and students from both BTN and from LFI as a whole that have joined in this season’s field work.

Closing off this field-season, we will have one last effort on trout tagging, we will start tagging European Eel, and lastly we expect to download data from our receivers late November/early December.

#NFR_PUFFINS (Nr. 352869)

#RFF_BOATS (Nr. 341381)