Britain’s rarest freshwater fish reappears in Bassenthwaite Lake

Britain’s rarest freshwater fish, the Vendace, has made an unexpected reappearance in Bassenthwaite Lake in north-West England more than a decade after being declared ‘locally extinct’. A fish community survey of Bassenthwaite Lake which took place this autumn recorded a single young vendace specimen. The small size of the fish, only 54 mm in length, makes it likely to be an underyearling which hatched during the spring of this year. Dr Ian Winfield from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology led this autumn’s survey. He said, “This finding of a single vendace individual is a very