A former Young Scientist of the Year works to make people aware of their environment and the damage being done to it.
Mary Kelly from Castleblayney County Monaghan won the Aer Lingus Young Scientist award for her geology project in 1976.
Now a science graduate, she is undertaking postgraduate study on brown trout in a small tributary of the river Dodder near Rathfarnham, assisted today by her husband Noel Quinn.
Electrodes placed in the water to catch the fish. Mary Kelly explains that the fish are unharmed during this process.
Just stunned.
Each trout is weighed, measured and has samples of scales taken. It is also possible to find out what the fish has been feeding on by flushing its stomach and examining the contents.
After two and a half years of studying this waterway, Mary Kelly knows some of its residents well.
You get to like them after two and a half years. I have never eaten a brown trout.
All of this painstaking work will benefit anglers who fish along the Dodder as well as conservationists. Committed environmentalists, Mary Kelly and Noel Quinn are members of the County Monaghan branch of the Irish Wildlife Federation, which works to raise awareness about our natural environment.
What we can lose through various types of destruction, pollution, removal of hedgerows, the cutting down of trees.
This report for 'Ireland’s Eye’ was broadcast on 19 May 1983. The reporter is Maireád McGuinness.
'Ireland's Eye' was a Tuesday-to-Friday series with human-interest stories and features from locations throughout Ireland. First broadcast on 7 October 1980, the programme ran until August 1983.
