Today seems like the right day to show some love for our migratory fishes and their freshwater cousins! After all, May 16, 2020 is World Fish Migration Day (WFMD) and we here at FIRE Lab have some exciting plans on the horizon! For those who might not know about WFMD, it is a world-wide celebration […]
Addressing challenges at road-river crossings
Last week, FIRE Lab hosted a one-day workshop with collaborators Maria Pregnolato (Bristol Uni), and Carlos Cabo and Pipo Roces (Swansea Uni). The focus of the workshop was on bridges, particularly those occur where roads cross over rivers (what we refer to as road-river crossings). At the workshop, we shared ideas about methods and strategies […]
Art Up A Mountain
On a freezing Sunday morning in mid-November, I set out with Steph to walk Nant Tawe Fechan, from Tafarn y Garreg to the Tawe’s source high on the Brecon Beacons, making art as we went along. Technically not mountains, hills, but that’s a matter of elevation. We wanted to try out a few different art […]
Professor Geoff Petts – an inspiring river scientist
The blog post this week pays tribute to the career of Professor Geoff Petts, an inspiring river scientist who sadly passed away in August 2018. Although I never worked with Professor Petts, this piece highlights recent research, reviews and reflections published to acknowledge his significant contribution to the field, before describing how his research has […]
The Debut Of Musical Scribblefish
The FIRE Lab team was out in force at Swansea University’s Science After Dark festival on October 30th. Virtually the whole of the Uplands area of the city became a night-time science park with a varied mix of exhibitions and performances to engage and entertain. We took over the top floor of The Book Shop bar […]
From Swansea to Solihull
Happy Friday readers! Yesterday, I swapped my usual routine of researching freshwater invertebrates, to teaching them to primary school children this week. For this, I visited Sharmans Cross Junior School (Solihull, West Midlands), who hosted a water day for their year 5 group (ages 9-10) so that the students could learn about how our precious […]
Investigating the world of marine inverts in Worms’s Head, Gower
Last week, Dr Ed Pope kindly offered me the opportunity to join him and his class of second year biosciences undergraduate students at Worm’s Head to take a glimpse of the intertidal marine invertebrate community. The weather was on our side, giving us a good window of sunshine to explore the fascinating inverts in the tidal […]
A Roundup Of The Blue Field Trip
Out In The Field Last week I went on a couple of FIRE Lab field trips with colleagues Steph and Joelle to walk the River Tawe Path, making cyanotypes, or blueprints, along the way. I’d prepared Bockingford paper with a solution of two chemicals, Ammonium ferric citrate and Potassium ferricyanide, in a darkroom and took them with me […]
Can cameras improve the monitoring of freshwater systems?
Hello everyone! My name is Loren Gittings and I am an MSc student at Swansea University currently undertaking my dissertation within the FIRE lab team. I am very excited to have the opportunity to share details of my MSc project with you all. My project explores how underwater cameras can be used to quantify the […]
Fire in the hole! Watch out for art and science along the Tawe River
A few months ago myself, Rose, and James headed up the Tawe River valley as part of some exploratory research in relation to science and art on tributaries to the Tawe. We are looking at differences on culverted and non-culverted streams, and bringing together arts and sciences to do so. It’s a growing area of […]
