2022 was the second study year for the West Coast Tracking Project, a partnership fish-tracking project with Fisheries Management Scotland and Marine Scotland, aiming to better understand the movements of salmon smolts around the west coast of Scotland as they leave their natal rivers and migrate to their North Atlantic feeding grounds. This project will generate valuable data and help us learn more about the movements of these young salmon,  which will help to protect wild fish from the pressures they face in the coastal zone. In 2022 the project aimed to understand the residence time of smolts in sea lochs, which is an important component factoring into smolt exposure time to sea lice in the marine environment.

Year 2 saw the project tag over 1000 smolts across 11 rivers (with 2 rivers in partnership with the Sea Monitor project) and over 250 acoustic receiver units deployed in arrays throughout rivers, sea lochs and out into the open sea. After these receiver units were retrieved from the water around the west coast of Scotland over the winter months, often in some very challenging weather conditions, our research team began to analyse the findings from Year 2 ahead of the final study year in 2023.

Watch our short video update for an overview of the second year of the West Coast Tracking project.

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