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Gairloch herring spawn features on BBC Springwatch 2019

Posted: Thursday 13 June, 2019 @ 15:03:03

Eyed herring eggs on maerly seabed near Gairloch, March 2019 (photo Andy Jackson)

The second part of the Gairloch spring spawning herring story, filmed by Andy Jackson of Subsea TV with support from SWRFT, was featured on BBC Springwatch episode 9 on Monday 10th June.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0005wy8/springwatch-2019-episode-9

The herring story starts at just after 39mins : 15secs into the programme and is narrated by Chris Packham.

The film, which also provides background of how the Scottish herring fishery declined towards the end of the 20th century, includes some amazing underwater footage of ‘eyed’ herring eggs on the maerl gravel seabed to the west of South Erradale just outside the mouth of Loch Gairloch and herring eggs hatching in a temporary aquarium in the SWRFT office in March 2019.

Here's a link to Andy Jackson's video of observations of Gairloch spring spawning herring featured by the BBC including the egg carpet on the maerly sea bed and hatching eggs:

https://vimeo.com/323284761

Further background information can be found on this website at:

https://www.wrft.org.uk/news/newsitem.cfm?id=221

http://www.wrft.org.uk/files/Wester%20Ross%20spring%20spawning%20herring%20recoded%20on%20video%20to%20the%20west%20of%20Red%20Point%20near%20Gairloch%20v2.pdf

For much help with this part of the survey, thank you to Andy Jackson (Subsea TV), John MacKenzie (Wester Ross Sea Adventures https://www.facebook.com/westerrossseaadventures/), George Brown, Bill Whyte, and Patricia Sturrock.