A specialist team from British Waterways is relocating thousands of fish from drained sections of a canal in Bath to allow essential repairs to be carried out to the lock walls.
The £270,000 repair project will involve the complete draining of six locks along a mile long section at the Bath Lock Flight on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and will entail the capture and temporary re-homing of an estimated 1.6 tonnes of fish.
The team will use electro-fishing techniques to capture the fish, which they expect to include bream, roach, eels and carp with the captured fish being released into neighbouring sections of the canal where they can swim back to their usual homes once the work is completed.
The work will include repair of the 200-year-old brick lock walls as well as the replacement of lock gate seals including those of the Bath Deep Lock, which at 5.7m/19' is the second deepest lock in England.
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