Trouble on the Test

http://www.fieldsportschannel.tv/index.php/corporate-site-home/podcast

7th July programme

Mick Lunn and Clive Graham-Ranger talking about what's wrong with the Test and stuff. Mick blames new houses in Andover but calls the problem 'sediment'. CGR thinks very little of the 'nippers' straight out of Uni who are trying to find their own answers.

The Test is the ground fed canary, and those with similar rivers should take note. This river certainly doesn't need its supporting angler base to 'bagga ooofff' and take their fishing pounds with them. The problem needs solving, because the Test is too important and because the same will happen to our rivers soon.

My answer, for what it is worth? Eutrophication via intensive farming, fish farms and treated sewage discharge (CSO's included) is chronic pollution in the form of too much nitrates and phosphates. Algae uses these nutrients, smothering the ranunculus, reducing the flow and the habitat for inverts.

The EA give all of the River Test below the Anton confluence a good ecological status and a good chemical status. However the chemical status for the Test aquifer is poor. There seems to be very few biological monitoring sites on the Test (4) when compared to The Itchen (22).

When working on a paper labelled 'Coarse Fish Decline in the Hampshire Avon' [1991], and living on the largest trout farm in the UK, it was clear to me that the turbidity directly below, and for someway downstream of, the main outlets was having a major effect on the health of the river. I stumbled across a frightening statistic claiming the volume of the summer Test was being used over a dozen times for fish farming. I wouldn't want any of my rivers following through a fish farm 12 times and then expect the resulting 'water' to grow ranunculus and inverts and this without the other major effluents.

I'm hoping to fish the Test before the summer is out, not to gloat at its demise but to see for myself the changes that have taken since I was a 'nipper' on its banks in the late 80's and early 90's.