The world is full of podcasts, and FOMO is real… so here’s a brilliant (not to mention, ahem, ‘metal AF‘) half-hour of listening that we’d highly recommend adding to your playlist.
Daniel Osmond is a writer, friend of Urbantrout and senior fisheries officer with Westcountry Rivers Trust who’s recently finished his PhD on the wide genetic variability of wild trout, and especially the startling capacity of some (physically and genetically!) isolated populations to survive and thrive in post-industrial mining rivers, freighted with heavy metals which would quickly kill trout from cleaner environments.
Produced by naturalists Will Leo Hawkes and Ben Porter, Will and Ben the Wildlife Men is a podcast series that’s been reviewed by BBC Wildlife as ‘refreshing authentic’.
Now, with Dan as their very first guest appearance, this is an episode that anyone who’s interested in urban and other trout will surely want to catch.
Heavy Metal Trout in Hard Rock Rivers is available to listen now on Apple Music and Spotify.
Then, if you’d like to dig deeper into this area for yourself, you can find Dan’s research paper here: Living in a post-industrial landscape: repeated patterns of genetic divergence in brown trout (Salmo trutta) across the British Isles.
