No fish data for one year due to broken counter

The EA calls the River Tyne England's best salmon river

No fish stocks were recorded on what the Environment Agency (EA) calls England's best salmon river for a year because a counter was broken.

The fish pass on the River Tyne at Riding Mill in Northumberland has had a monitor to check the waterbody's salmon and sea trout populations since 1996.

But the equipment broke in July last year and was not fixed for 11 months as the EA said it had to wait for "safe and suitable" conditions to install a new one.

Professor Jamie Stevens, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, said key data had therefore not been recorded.

The counter gives scientists an idea of how successful the area's fish populations are, Prof Stevens said.

It also helps track the success of the Kielder Salmon Centre, which was built in 1978 as part of the creation of Kielder Reservoir and releases about 360,000 young salmon into the Tyne each year.

Prof Stevens said the EA had "almost certainly" missed two "critical points" in a salmon's life cycle in the Tyne over the past year, including counting the number of adult females that returned to the river last autumn.

"This is one way of determining whether your population is sustainable," he said, adding: "Are there enough fish coming back to be able to maintain the population?"

He said the other main data that was missing covered the spring when juvenile salmon migrated from freshwater habitats into the sea.

The EA said the first "comprehensive" fish stock data it had for the Tyne this year was July and that it was "committed to providing ongoing updates".