Wednesday 27th April 2011- Silkiborg

Another early start as we had a long drive up to Silkeborg to meet Michael Pedersen of the DTU (Technical University of Denmark) to talk about tagging and stocking of eels.  It was a 3 ½ hour drive.

Made good time getting out of Copenhagen and got to a truly massive bridge going across to Odense, it 18km long.  It is an amazing piece of engineering with stunning views.  However this was slightly tempered when we got to the other side by a hefty toll fee of about £24 …to be paid each way!

A quick stop to refresh ourselves and then we headed off again.  Another hour and a half we were close to Denmark’s second biggest city, Arhus.  Sharon decided she would spend the day there while I met Michael, as it had an interesting looking living museum.. After a couple of circuits of Arhus’ outer ring roads, like a plane waiting to land, we eventually made our way to the centre.  I jettisoned my family pretty quickly as I now had to make up some time.

Eventually arrived at the DTU offices in Silkeborg about 15 minutes late and was met by a smiling Michael Pedersen.  We went straight to lunch which was again provided for me, people are so kind. 

So for the next couple of hours we sat and talked in the sunshine about his experience with tagging and stocking eels.  I learned that it was entirely possible to tag eels as small as 5g with a coded wire tag and that 95% of tags stay in.

Michael also gave me his views on the status of eels and the reasons for their decline.  It’s interesting that everybody has a slightly different take on it.

Then Michael told me about his research trip on the Galathea 3 in 2007 where he and other researchers went to the Sargasso sea to search for eel larvae.  He explained how they trawled a huge plankton net 3m in diameter and with 1mm mesh down to several hundred meters and on bringing it emptying out the contents (various plankton species) which amounted to about a mug full.  They found a couple of hundred larvae.  Michael described the Sargasso as a wide expanse devoid of much life.

Then Michael took me round the DTU Aqua, and aquarium and park open to the public.  The highlight for me was the bottom floor of the aquarium, totally devoted to eels and eel history.

Michael Pedersen at the Eel exhibition

After this we went to his office for coffee and Michael introduced me to a couple of his colleagues involved with eel stocking.  After digging me out a couple of papers it was time for Michael to go and pick up his daughter off the school bus and for me to go and collect my family from Arhus.

I parked in the city and met my girls for tea.  We decided to have a Chinese meal.  The flavours are so different here, I don’t think any of us enjoyed it and Chinese is our favourite!

Well after a 40 min drive we got to our hotel in a Village called Braedstrup.  It was quite a shock to see this huge hotel complex in such a small place.  Luckily it had a small pool so the girls were thrilled to have an hour splashing about while Sharon and I sorted out administration details and planned the next day.  All had a late night and were very tired.

Another long day tomorrow, driving 2.5  hours North and then 7.5 hours south back to Copenhagen.