Stoke Ferry Eel Screens

We are currently planning to install brand new eel screens at our Stoke Ferry site as part of significant programme of works across the region designed to make a difference to the endangered species. As part of Anglian Water’s Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP), the scheme is a £1.5million investment into new eel screens which will be installed on the Cut-Off Channel and the River Wissey. Why are we doing this? The European eel is now classed as critically endangered after a 95 per cent decline in population over the last 25 years. Eels spend their early years in rivers across Europe before migrating to the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic to spawn. The spawn is then thought to use the Gulf Stream to return to our rivers, by which time they have developed into very small glass eels. One of the reasons why the eel population is thought to have declined so rapidly in recent years, is because structures in our rivers, like weirs, locks and other machinery prevents the species from completing their migration cycle in order to reproduce. The new screens at Stoke Ferry will stop eels from entering the abstraction intake, but the size of the mesh on the screens also means they will protect fish and other organisms from being drawn into the machinery too. Anglian Water