Conference and Operation Pond - Part 2

At the beginning of this month I spent a lovely week in Belgium attending the annual conference of the European Cetacean Society. I made a quick stop in Brussels before heading to Liége for a week of catching up with friends, old and new, attending interesting talks, and presenting my first scientific poster! I presented some data regarding the presence of Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus) around the Isle of Man. I worked on analysing these data following my work with Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch last summer. Of course, a fair quantity of chocolate and beer was consumed, too, but this didn't interfere with the science in any way!

Liége by night

Liége Aquarium-Museum

After returning from Belgium I was keen to crack on completing Operation Pond. Suspecting that it would soon rain I wanted to get the hole filled and the liner replaced to use the rain to start refilling the pond. So, two trips to the garden centre to get some soil and we're back in business. The old liner was still in great condition so could be reused, and the full rain butt was emptied in to allow it to refill.

New soil in

Liner back in 

So, it's all going pretty well but I have a busy week at work now, so the pond will have to wait again. Then I need to finish off the edges to secure the liner, and think about introducing some new plants to pond2.0.

Operation Pond - Part 1

The house we currently live in was bought brand new, so the back garden was nothing more than a patch of mud. This meant we could do whatever we wanted to it and, when the garden was designed, we chose to include a pond. This started off great and attracted loads of wildlife...

Large red damselfly

Smooth newt

Common frog

However, the pond was made far too deep (about 4ft) for its surface area, and with steep sides. Over the years it was too difficult to manage the plant life which became overgrown and messy. There is still some life around, but no sign of damselflies for quite some time, and the frogs have not mated here for at least the last two years.

Overgrown state

I decided to take it on as a bit of a project, and so Operation Pond was born. I'm going to empty and clear out the existing pond, remove the liner and partly fill the hole to make it shallower and hopefully more manageable. So I began emptying the pond (with a bucket - mental!), attempting to remove years of matted plant material, and lifting out great handfuls of black sludge from the bottom. It was pretty hard going, but surprisingly it took less than two days to achieve.

Getting there

Success!

Even more surprising was the number of common frogs and smooth newts still living in the pond. I removed at least six frogs, which quickly hopped away, and rescued ten newts (five of each sex). As it is going to be quite a while before the new pond is finished, I collected the newts in a bucket and relocated them to a large public pond across the road from my house, which I suspect is where they colonized our pond from to begin with. Hopefully they will be happy there for now and will make their way back to restock pond2.0.

Lots of newts

The first newt

So far, so good. The new pond will have to wait whilst I attend the European Cetacean Society conference, but watch this space. There will be more to come as Operation Pond continues.