Windermere health check volunteers needed

To get a detailed picture, volunteers are needed to collect water samples from all around the lake on the same day

Volunteers are being sought in the Lake District to take part in a "health check" survey following concerns about the quality of the water in Windermere.

Campaigners say raw sewage discharged in the lake has left water quality so poor it is in danger of becoming "ecologically dead".

Now citizen scientists are needed to help capture a one-day snapshot of conditions at England's largest lake.

The first Big Windermere Survey is expected to be held in the summer.

It is hoped the survey will help support the development of future initiatives to improve the condition of the lake

Volunteers will be trained to collect water samples from about 100 different locations in Windermere and in the becks and lakes that flow into it, which will then be analysed for nutrient and bacterial levels.

The project is being carried out by the Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) and Lancaster University.

Dr Ben Surridge, senior lecturer at Lancaster Environment Centre, said: "This will be a large-scale, intensive snapshot checking the health of Windermere, and we are really looking forward to helping deliver new understanding of the lake and its surrounding catchment.

"We're particularly interested in something called faecal indicator organisms, and that's because these are potentially indicating a risk to human or animal health because they're associated with so-called pathogenic or disease-causing organisms."

Windermere is ecologically important as it is home to rare fish species including the Arctic charr

Trine Bregstein, from the FBA, said: "Anyone at all from the area can get involved and take part in this sample.

"It's very important to drive community engagement because it helps and empowers people to feel like they're doing something for the environment that they care about."

So far more than 100 people have signed up to take part in the survey.

Conservationist and campaigner Matt Staniek said: "More data and more understanding of the problem in Windermere is fantastic, but my real problem is, the issues that we're talking about in Windermere have been known for the past 20 years.

"We don't need to analyse it any further, we just need action on the ground which is going to stop phosphorus pollution."