Understanding Differences Between Lakes and Reservoirs Penny Beames and I published an article today in the journal Frontiers for Young Minds where we present differences between lakes and reservoirs, and why it matters for people and nature. Our article was reviewed by students (ages 14-17) at Peru iGEM Team. The full article is shared below […]
How city roads trap migrating fish
Greater London is crisscrossed by 14,800km of public roads, each with an average width of 8m. This network accounts for 8% of the metropolitan area, and motorways and A-roads alone cross the Thames and its tributaries at least 400 times. A similar picture is seen in cities across the world. You’ve heard of, and maybe […]
Underwater Haiku Exquisite Corpse Creation!
In early 2020 I was looking around the internet for local poetry events and groups when I came across an Eventbrite listing for an event planned by the Indisciplinary Poetics cluster at Bristol University that captured my interest. Given that I didn’t work at Bristol Uni I thought I’d give them a shout to be […]
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 […]
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 […]
#FishInThePost: European Perch
This week’s #FishInThePost question was, ‘which freshwater fish have been known as the wolves of the river?’ The answer we were looking for was the European Perch (Perca fluviatilis) and it was correctly guessed by @UnderwaterMedia. We were also very taken by the lovely photo of a Perch shared by @UnderwaterMedia and look forward to […]
#FishInThePost – Lemme know Minnow
On Thursday we tweeted this week’s #FishInThePost question: ‘Me being one of Wales’ smaller freshwater fishes, is it not impressive that I produce up to 1,000 eggs in a breeding season? Which Welsh freshwater fish am I?‘ Winning guess by Pepijn for this week’s #FishInThePost! We had several great guesses, commentary, and puns about which […]
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 […]
#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 […]