Project will create lamprey sanctuaries in Mondego to recover population

A project by the Intermunicipal Community of the Coimbra Region presented today in Penacova will take adult lampreys upstream from the weir bridge, in Coimbra, and create sanctuaries to preserve the larvae of this species, which is increasingly less present in the Mondego.

The project, financed by European funds and with a budget of 100 thousand euros, will be carried out over two years, with the aim of counteracting the loss of the lamprey population in the Mondego, after 2024 was the year with the lowest number of that fish in the river, since records began.

According to the Mayor of Penacova, Álvaro Coimbra, the project was launched after the municipality challenged the scientific community, fishermen and other people involved in river activities to debate the preservation of lampreys, and the idea of ​​an action to protect the habitat of lampreys in the Mondego basin emerged.

“These are a set of measures to recover the lamprey habitat in the Mondego, relocate a group of animals to selected locations and create sanctuaries, in a project that involves fishermen's associations and local communities”, said the mayor, recalling that the lack of this fish is a problem that affects all Portuguese rivers.

The initiative of the Intermunicipal Community of the Coimbra Region (CIMRC), which was presented today at Casa das Artes Martins da Costa, in Penacova, is part of a European program, called DALIA, which works on the rehabilitation of aquatic ecosystems.

According to Pedro Raposo, director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences (MARE), the institution that ensures the technical and scientific coordination of the project, the objective is to recover the lamprey population in the Mondego.

“The situation is critical and so we are going to speed up the translocation of these animals. Basically, we are going to buy them from fishermen, downstream of the dam [in Coimbra], and then take them by car upstream of Coimbra to be released and find breeding grounds”, explained the researcher from the University of Évora.

According to the expert, the fish passage installed on the dam bridge that allows them to go up the river works, but efficiency should be around 30% of the animals that arrive there.

“This would be enough to maintain the viability of lampreys, but when the population reaches critical levels it is not enough. The idea is to increase the success of reproduction by releasing the animals upstream, where they will colonize stretches of river and establish new populations of larvae [this fish spends between four and five years in the larval stage, in the riverbed, before going to sea]”, he explained.

Pedro Raposo told Lusa that, subsequently, the project team will monitor and evaluate the abundance of larvae, identifying areas where there is a “high density”.

Once these sanctuaries have been identified and mapped, their location is made available to the different entities associated with the project, to ensure that there will be no interventions in the river that could destroy “all the work done”.

Furthermore, the places where adult lampreys are released will also be shared with the GNR, to combat poaching and illegal fishing.

Although the project only has a two-year execution period, Pedro Raposo considered that it will be essential to secure financing in the future to continue the project for at least “another six or seven years”.

Furthermore, the researcher stated that funding should also be increased.

“Lampreys are being sold for 100 euros,” which could reduce the number of fish translocated each year, he noted.

According to Pedro Raposo, the Mondego “is the only river where something is being done”, when the project should be replicated in all rivers in Portugal, which suffer from the same problem, arguing that the Government creates measures in this regard.