A project which aims to track scores of salmon smolt as they migrate along the River Usk has entered into its second year as Natural Resources Wales’ (NRW) continues its efforts to halt the decline of the species by pinpointing the challenges they face on their journey to the sea.

The project, supported by The Wye and Usk Foundation, involves catching up to 100 salmon smolts a year and tagging them with acoustic transmitters, which emit regular high frequency pings.

A smolt is a stage of the salmon life cycle when the fish is preparing for migration to sea. The transmitters provide an insight to their movements, as well as providing data related to survival rates and migration behaviour, helping to inform future salmon management and conservation work.

An unseasonably wet May led to a probable good year for migration success during the project’s first year (2021A minimum of 67% of the tagged smolts successfully made the 100+km journey from the tagging site on the upper river to the Severn Estuary.  Fastest individual fish passage time from a monitoring point upstream of Brecon to the final receiver array in the estuary at Newport (95.6km) was 36.22 hrs.

The project is part of NRWs Salmon and Sea Trout Plan of action, which aims to understand and address the many factors contributing to the decline in these fisheries.

Further information can be read on the NRW website here.