DEVELOPMENT OF AN eDNA DATA SET TO PRODUCE A WFD COMPATIBLE CLASSIFICATION TOOL FOR LAKE FISH IN SCOTLAND

Assessment of lake fish remains one of the main outstanding classification tools which Scotland, England and Wales have yet to deliver under the WFD. This has been hampered by a lack of standardised fish data from a suitably wide network of standing water sites- a situation which has arisen because of the difficulties in monitoring fish using traditional techniques, which largely rely on lethal gillnetting. The advent of e-DNA methods has provided an alternative means of monitoring and assessing fish in standing waters, and data are now available from a broad network of sites in Scotland, and parts of England and Wales. This project aims to examine this data set and use it to produce a classification tool which will be suitable for reporting the status of fish for the third River Basin Plan