I got an email that said: "do you want to come and see
an amphibious weed-cutting boat?"
Yes!
DEBBIE McNAMARA: It's an amphibian boat,
so it can work in shallow waters, because it's tracked.
JAMES DILNOT: On the front it has scissor cutters,
and as it goes along, the T-cutter on the front
cuts the bottom of the river and the weed lifts up
and flows down stream.
JD: We've got a tree in the river, we're just going to
pull it up onto the bank with the tractor winch in a minute.
There's probably in excess of 15 tonne of weed
actually matted up and behind it.
When that tree gets released,
and the weed starts to flow down,
he can break the weed up, and then
take it out at the weed tie further downstream.
DM: The weed will then carry on down the watercourse,
and it'll get caught at what we call a weed tie.
So we put in two deflectors in the water,
they're like two barriers, and then we've got an excavator
that will lift the weed out of the watercourse
and put it on the bank.
(LAUGHS) Eels are a protected species,
and we do our best to not harm them.
And we have to make sure that when we remove the weed,
we do it very carefully.
And we have a set method of removing the weed
so as to allow the eels to carry on going down the watercourse.
JD: Along here it's what we call a W2A cut,
it's an 80-20. 80% comes out, 20% gets left in.
Where the water flow goes through, it rips the weed
out the bottom of the river, and that'll take it down
through the centre of Canterbury, into the sluice gates there.
And it could potentially cause an obstruction there
and take out quite a few houses.
DM: Because if tunnels and culverts block completely,
then the water will back up, flood properties,
flood businesses, and we'll have huge problems.
TOM SCOTT: Thank you very much to the Environment Agency for showing me around.
If you've got something similarly odd in your company
or your organisation, let me know!
I want to film it and I'm fairly sure my audience want to see it.
And now, GoPro footage of chainsawing a log,
and raking some weed to make sure it's free of eels.
That is a really weird sentence.
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