Apologies if you have seen this before

[lambert1]

I got this as suggested viewing on youtube.YouTube
It is quite staggering and very concerning, confirming what many of us have known and commented on before. I am sure that there are those on here that know this area well and can confirm what is being said. What chance is there for the smaller brooks, streams, when they take hold like this?

 

[mikench]

It certainly is! I have commented before about mans capacity, not only for stupidity, but to eradicate different species of animal! Surely if everyone, anglers and others set out to trap these things at every opportunity we could substantially reduce their numbers. The bonus is they are delicious to eat!

 

[103841]

That's scary stuff, I know of the problem but not the scale!

 

[thecrow]

Seen it before? I cant even see it now and haven't been able to since the site "up grade"

 

[Keith M]

We have had Turkish crayfish in our lake ever since a lorry carrying them for restaurants broke down and was allowed to keep them temporary in nets in a reservoir up stream of our estate lake back in the early 90’s.

Like Signals Turkish Crayfish grow to a very large size and can even move out of the water and at night the Turkish Crayfish would often be found sitting out of water on tree roots around the lake, so I should imagine travelling along wet ditches and drains to other waters wouldn't be too hard for them to do.

Signal crayfish can’t survive together with Turkish crayfish because of some small virus that one of them carries so we have never had Signals in our lake, even though they inhabit many nearbye waters.

In the early years we used to supply them to biologists from a university (can’t remember which one) who were trying to find a way to kill them without affecting the other organisms and animals inhabiting the lake but this was unfortunately not successful.

For many years it was pointless using bottom baits as our baits were always being taken by these Turkish Crayfish; however for some reason they have now virtually disappeared from our lake; whether this is because they were eventually eaten by predators or it was due to our lake suffering from a major fish kill due to oxygen depletion caused by a chemical accident upstream of us about eight years ago or because we’ve had some very cold winters, or maybe both species had viruses that the other species couldn’t handle or a combination of all these factors we are unsure. However even the waters around us which had Signal Crayfish infestations have seen their Signals disappearing (although not completely).

Keith

 

[maggot_dangler]

I have seen them in the canal by me in tipton so they are all over the place just hope they dont get into the club pool that would be a dang nightmare ...


PG ...

 

[rich66]

Good grief, never realised it was that bad at 50/m2
I know we’ve got them around Leicester in the canals etc.
Never caught them on my club waters but I’ve been told they are there.