Happy Friday readers! This week’s blog post describes a workshop that I (James White) recently attended in Brazil. After joining the FIRE lab team in August, I have been hoping to undertake a stronger, inter-disciplinary approach to my studies. Given that my research background has entailed examining ecological processes within river environments (see here), one […]

#FishInThePost: Common Roach
This week’s #FishInThePost question linked to the common name of the fish species that we had in mind, and to a common name for a common insect. Our question was, ‘which Welsh freshwater fish has a common name the same as an insect that people also eat?’ James Stovold was the first to guess the […]

Mapping for the Global River Obstruction Database
Blog Post by Sayali Pawar In a previous blog post about #DamorNot, Steph mentioned that FIRE Lab collaborates on the Global River Obstruction Database (GROD) project led by researchers at the Global Hydrology Lab. Before I continue, let me introduce myself, my name is Sayali, I’m a physical geographer, and a member of the FIRE […]

The quest for dam data – #DamOrNot 2/2
In last week’s blog post, I wrote about #DamOrNot, a weekly game I host on Twitter, and shared definitions and imagery of different infrastructure we commonly encounter in the game. This week I’ll work to address a few questions that came through on Twitter. A few of these questions came from Michiel Jorisson, an active […]

Getting to know the Twitter game #DamOrNot (post 1/2)
In the summer of 2016 I thought it would be fun to share a post on Twitter about my quest to confirm the locations of different built infrastructure found on rivers in France. I asked Twitter followers whether the infrastructure in the satellite image I posted was a dam, or not. This was a question […]

#FishInThePost – River Lamprey
Our question for the week contained two fun facts about lampreys: the death of a member of the royal family and their disappearance in otter poop. Three species of lamprey occur in freshwater ecosystems in Wales: the Brook Lamprey (Lampetra planeri), the River Lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis), and the Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus). This week’s #FishInThePost […]
Robots, fish, fisheries, and more at Robofish Workshop
What could a robotic fish look like? From 5-6th December, FIRE lab took part in a Cherish-DE funded workshop about the development of robotics to address challenges in fisheries. The workshop was led by Steph and Dr James Stovold, who, along with Dr Ting Jarusriboonchai, were awarded the funds for the workshop based on a […]
#FishInThePost – European bullhead
Yesterday we tweeted our weekly #FishInThePost with a special Christmas twist: The answer was very quickly delivered by @jessica_minett, who correctly identified the answer as the European bullhead (Cottus gobio). The meaning behind our festive pun stems back to the work of Smyly (1957), who identified that bullheads fixate on a single rock known as […]
Exploring freshwater geographies: Approaches and prospects for engaged research methods
I arrived at Swansea University with a background in cultural geography and qualitative research methodologies and methods. In particular, I am very fond of using ethnographic research methods— including participant observation, interviewing, and photographic work to explore the lived, everyday worlds of research participants. I use in-depth observation and participation through ethnographic fieldwork to understand […]

#FishInThePost – Twaite Shad
This week’s #FishInThePost was created and written by Sayali Pawar. On Thursday we tweeted our most recent #FishInThePost question: ‘I’m a fish hearing specialist, and can respond to sounds my comrades make up to 180 kHz, what Welsh native fish species am I?’. There were a lot of great guesses, and while several people came […]