In the July issue of its magazine, the local fishing organisation (FLPS – www.flps.lu)  has raised many important issues concerning the developments in the fishing environment in Luxembourg. They talk inter alia about such subject as:

– removing artificial obstacles preventing fish migration, among which the most important is the dam in Rosport;

– re-naturalisation of creeks and rivers (almost all bigger rivers in Luxembourg were unfortunately de-naturalised);

– cormorant plague.

They seem to have a very reasonable approach but it also appears that the government turns a deaf ear to their appeals. For me one of the most interesting aspects was the lack of reliable information concerning fish population in local rivers. I know that electrical fishing takes place regularly in different waters throughout the country yet, for the reason I completely ignore, the results are not made public. I tried to obtain this data by writing to the the responsible body (Administration de la gestion de l’eau – http://www.eau.public.lu/administration) but, naturally, got no answer. In the era of open linked data one cannot really understand the fact of hiding the information obtained for taxpayers’ money. The only source of information so far is this book:

It’s very interesting but the latest data about fish populations come from 2005 so have now only historical value (as rightly remarked by the FLPS). For example one of the dominant species featuring in the book is perch, while in recent years it’s often easier to catch a salmon then a little perch in Luxembourgish waters. Chub, which has now completely dominated most of the rivers, only appears on distant places numbers-wise, etc. It is time now that the water administration makes the data available to the public following the modern open data principles. The prices of fishing licences are supposed to be increased, it would be fair to allow the fishermen to make an informed choice whether to buy a licence: it is up to them to decide, whether they want a licence for the Moselle where probably 95% of fish population is composed of round gobbies (grundel), etc. This could also show the evolution of fish stock, whether the measures taken to protect fish (for instance water treatment stations) bring the expected effects, and have many other benefits.