SWAMP: the Specialist Weatherfish Action and Monitoring Partnership

Mud loach library

One of the first big tasks is to bring together all existing literature from all around Europe into one library. This may contain scientific papers, reports (in native language), old book chapters, old newspaper articles, pictures, old drawings, etc. We therefore created a shared folder on google drive. In this folder you are able to find/add the country subfolder for which your particular weatherfish information is referring to. To bring some order in the documents and to be able to search for specific toppics, we created a accompanying excel sheet where, for each country, a seperate table is created where the stored documents for that country are listed and provided with a unique code and a small description (see example for BE). The name of each document in the library should start with this unique code, so it is easy to find it back based on the list (see again example for BE). In some country folders, I placed already documents that I had already in my possesion, although I did not enlist them yet nor give them a unique code. Ideally, we have one volunteer for each country to make this list and numbering. Be aware we created also a folder ‚international‘ for documents that concern wider areas. We hope you share the weatherfish information in your possession this way so it can be made available for the whole community. 

Mud loach webpage

We will also make work of an official webpage (soon more about this). 

 Milestones

Apart of these tasks, we defined two major milestones for this year:

 1. SWAMP will be represented at the 1st International Conference on the Cultural Significance of Fish, hosted by the Institute of Fisheries Management. This conference, titled „Ripples through Time: The Influence of Fish on Humanity“, will take place at The Maltings, Ely, England on 10–11 June. We will give a presentation about weatherfish as cultural heritage and by doing so also introduce our specialist group (see abstract). For this, we want to gather as much information as possible about the ‚use‘ of weatherfish from historical times up till now. If you have any interesting information or stories about this aspect of weatherfish please add it together with your name in this document.

2. The 1st SWAMP symposium! Thanks to Josefs big efforts, we are very glad to organize a first international symposium on weatherfish as part of a bigger symposium on wetland fish to be held October 23-25, 2025 at the Natural History Museum Vienna, followed by a post-conference excursion on Oct. 26 (see official announcement). The conference will include the „Second International Workshop on Umbra krameri“ (one day), and one day focusing on Misgurnus fossilis. The third day will cover other swamp fish species like Carassius sp., Leucaspius delineatus and others. Neozoan fish impacting these native species and their ecosystems will be also considered. We welcome oral and poster presentations to be given in presence. Further information regarding registration and other details will be given on the webpage https://www.uibk.ac.at/limno/research/events/muddywaters – please keep track on the developments given there! Please spread this invitation to people potentially interested.

Your contributions to our tasks/activities

We hope to see many of you on one or both of these activities and look forward for your contributions to our tasks/activities. Any ideas, questions or whatever you need to share with the whole group or the core team, please reach out! Also spread the word and forward this mail to anyone potentially interested. We still hope to add people with knowledge about weatherfish from several countries not yet covered. Contact details of such persons can allways be added to our weatherfish specialist list as new member.