Person on kayak
This is the question Charlotte Brockington is determined to answer to help inform river users’ management plans.
After several months of working on her MSc, Charlotte got 230 replies from an online survey focusing on recreational users, including kayakers, anglers, swimmers, walkers, etc. She found that 63% of river users think regulatory agencies should be promoting greater access to rivers in Wales. The full questionnaire is now available to read.
This is only one component of this study, which also included a lab experiment, to see whether fish can become habituated to a predator attack after being exposed to a kayak. To carry out this experiment Charlotte used a tank with cameras set above to record the fish’s movements when exposed to a model predator and a model kayak.
Charlotte will be analysing her lab data, questionnaires, and literature review in the next couple of months in preparation for her dissertation.
This one-year MSc was funded by the KESS2 project in collaboration with Canoe Wales, and Natural Resources Wales and is supervised by Prof. Carlos Garcia De Leaniz.