More beetles than fly

Met up with Graham in the morning for our regular riverfly check on the Frome near the Ocean. The first thing we noticed in the bucket was a complete abundance of water beetles. Usually we see a few, but they were literally everywhere. And, in stark contrast, not a lot of gammarus on immediate looking. We settled down to do the samples and had to look very hard to find something. A few cased caddis and olives showed themselves after a while. But we could hardly see any gammarus. A count of 11 in the end, which is extraordinarily poor. I don’t think it’s pollution – it’s just the poor habitat caused by the low river levels and flow. We didn’t have a technical breach. We managed a score of 5, but this was a case of the score flattering the actual counts. Let’s hope next month we see an improvement.