Gamla Nils Ericson’s lock was rebuilt this summer to serve as a fish migration path for the weaker swimmers between Mälaren and Salt Lake. At a passage in the hiking trail, there is a camera, which this morning captured something other than the usual perch in the picture.
“Great fun,” writes Anna Roos, curator and researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, about the camera-happy otter.
The camera in the fish walking trail in Slussen is there to collect data on the fish that pass through the trail. Since last summer, hundreds of fish a day have been counted, and now also an otter.
The otter can first be seen struggling upstream past the camera, only to easily pass the camera again, downstream, just a short while later. Anna Roos, curator and researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, is delighted when she hears about the city otter.
“I was very happy when I heard about the otter,” Anna writes in an email and explains that otters are very unusual in central Stockholm, but that they do happen from time to time.
The otter managed to disappear completely from Sweden and parts of Europe for a period. Heavy hunting reduced the population, but environmental toxins such as PCBs and DDT also affected the animals’ reproduction.
“Twenty years after the bans on PCBs and DDT, we began to see a recovery of the otter in Sweden and it has continued to increase in number and distribution.”
“Not as shy as you might think”
That it would be unique for the city of Stockholm with an otter is not true. In recent years, several Swedish cities have had the predator in their waterways.
“The otter is probably not as shy as you might think. There are or have been otters in, for example, Uppsala, Mora, Linköping, Norrköping and Örebro. And now an adult male in central Stockholm. It’s great fun!” she concludes.
The fish walking trail is located just below the pedestrian and cycle path along the Norra slusskajen and is not visible from the outside. However, the city of Stockholm plans to install a “fish TV” on Munkbrokajen during the autumn.