Today, our staff, together with volunteers from the Nowa Wieś Lęborska Trout Club, caught fish from the old channel of the River Okalica and transferred them to the new channel built to make way for the S6 expressway. From a section approximately 120 metres long, we caught and transferred 872 small sea trout and brown trout. Special thanks go to Daniel and Marcin from the Trout Club for their selfless help with today’s work, which continued until late in the evening, and to Mr Paweł Makarski and Mr Karol Kryszk from #Budimex for their help in organising the catch, as well as for filling the bed of the new Okalica river channel with gravel and stones (totalling 200 tonnes), thereby creating a new spawning ground for sea trout, brown trout and other gravel-dwelling fish.
W.S.
The progress of construction on the S-6 route running through Lębork has forced BUDIMEX – the main contractor for this section – to build a culvert for the River Okalica. Due to the lack of any prior consultation with the Słupsk Regional Board of the Polish Angling Association – which manages fisheries in this area – during the design phase, upon learning of the start of construction on this new section of the river, the district’s ichthyologist, Wojciech Sobiegraj, set up a hotline between the Słupsk District Board of the Polish Angling Association, Budimex and the subcontractor responsible for the new riverbed, ensuring that, before work began on altering the river’s course, the fish present in the section of the riverbed earmarked for backfilling were removed and released into the newly constructed section of the river. The team organised by the ichthyologist carried out three passes along the river, catching the maximum possible number of fish, which were primarily trout and sea trout from natural spawning – wild spawning – as the River Okalica is not stocked with any fish species. Systematic research has been carried out for many years on this Pomeranian river into the effectiveness of natural spawning of sea trout and other anadromous fish, as well as protected species such as huchen and lampreys. All the wild fish were returned to the river once the water had cleared of the sediment caused by the excavation of the final earth embankments to connect the old riverbed with the new one and the draining of the old riverbed. The new channel of the Okalica at this point was reinforced with gabions, and the bed was filled with gravel of varying sizes, including boulders and larger stones. The whole process was documented in photographs and videos.
T.J.B.
