Celebrating World Ocean Day
12th Jun 2019
by Courtney Rowland
To celebrate our river and oceans the GFT team joined other conservation organisations for a World Oceans Day extravaganza held in Port Williams harbour!
The GFT team were joined by lots of visitors on Saturday to support our oceans for an exciting day in Port William! The day was filled with activities and some very special aquatic guests including a European Eel (Anguilla Anguilla), Brown Trout (Salmo Trutta) and juvenile Lampreys (lampreys which haven’t developed eyes yet so were completely blind!).
There are over 40,000 known species of fish, nearly a quarter of which can only be found in freshwater environments such as rivers and lakes and few special species will travel between the two environments during their lifecycle! It’s important we work together to conserve all aquatic environments from our rivers to our seas to protect all organisms!
One of our important migratory species is the European Eel which can be found throughout the rivers of Galloway, but did you know that all European Eels are born in the Sargasso Sea? That’s roughly 8000km from our coasts! Eel larvae take approximately 300 days to drift to our shores using the Gulf stream, here they will spend up to 20 years maturing before making the impressive journey to the Sargasso Sea to spawn only once in their lifetime!
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