Wild salmon strategy: The minutes of the Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan Delivery Group minutes for a meeting that took place on June 13th have been published on the Scottish Government website. After reading these minutes I don’t hold out much hope for the future of wild salmon in Scotland. I can’t see that anything discussed will actually do anything to help safeguard the future of this iconic fish. This is hardly surprising given that the majority of those attending the meeting failed to halt a 70% decline in Scottish catches in recent years so are unlikely to suggest anything new that can prevent salmon’s continuing decline. It seems that the main action proposed is to improve advice on catch and release especially in relation to minimising the time the fish is out of the water. This will include policy changes such as not displaying photos that do not meet the guidelines (although at least one board is still displaying such images). Fisheries Management Scotland are apparently leading on this work and have created a steering group to provide refreshed advice.
Interestingly, the salmon fishing Tweedbeats website discusses this very issue in a posting dated at the end of July. The commentary begins by suggesting that the subject is still controversial but argues that publishing any images of fish held above the water, whether by salmon boards, angling magazines etc should be considered totally unacceptable. Tweedbeats says that promoting this suggestion will please the silent majority – the fish. They will suffer less and survive to spawn more. Yet, Tweedbeats believes that his views will be met by cries of spoilsports which suggests that those who represent the sector, such as FMS, do not speak on behalf of many anglers who feel they need a memento of their catch.
FMS were mentioned a few more times in the Implementation Plan Delivery group minutes. For example, FMS are to meet with SEPA to discuss barrier removal and they have established a forum between them to discuss areas of concern. This is interesting because SEPA don’t seem very interested in the concerns of the salmon farming sector about the sea lice framework. In my experience they have ignored concerns about the science and about the evidence. Their view is that they have been commissioned to establish a framework of regulation to control sea lice and this is what they intend to do irrespective of whether their framework will have any impact on protecting wild fish or not. This is just another example of the wild fish sector being treated very differently by the authorities to the salmon farming industry.
The minutes provide further examples of the inequality between the two sectors. FMS report on a project that has included the purchase of Acoustic Deterrent Devices, currently prohibited to salmon farmers. FMS have also been given a grant to undertake sweep netting of the west coast aquaculture zone. Why have the wild fish sector who are fundamentally opposed to salmon farming being awarded a grant to determine whether salmon farming has had an impact on wild fish. Surely those tasked with this job should be from an impartial consultancy not those who have an axe to grind.
Finally, FMS’s new member of staff, a wild salmon conservation manager was allowed to attend the meeting to discuss catch and release. Surely, if even FMS now recognise that catch and release can harm wild salmon stocks then the time has come to ban catch and release altogether. It is clear from over twenty years of catch and release on the River Dee that catch and release does nothing to stop the decline of wild fish stocks. However, as I have pointed out previously the Wild Salmon Strategy has little to do with protecting wild salmon but rather wild salmon fishing instead.
Evidence: Wild Fish, formerly Salmon and Trout Conservation, formerly the Salmon & Trout Association have been posting recently on social media. They say:
“Salmon farming is a fundamentally unsustainable industry and a notable cause of the decline in populations of wild Atlantic salmon. Poorly run and badly sited open-net salmon farms along the Scottish coast are putting our now endangered Atlantic salmon at significant risk from parasites and diseases.”
Unfortunately, Wild Fish are unable to offer a single piece of evidence to show that sea lice associated with salmon farms are a notable cause of the decline of wild Atlantic salmon even though Rachel Mulrenan of Wild Fish told the Scottish Parliamentary inquiry in June that sea lice are their area of expertise. I sent her and their chief executive a copy of my graph showing almost parallel declines between east and west coast salmon populations hoping for a comment. In return all I heard was complete silence.
I sent the graph to other wild fish organisations too, and I did receive a response from one. They said:
“There are many pressures on salmon across their range, and different pressures may have similar/comparable overall effect on numbers in any particular location.”
However, they failed to offer any specific suggestion as to what might be causing an almost parallel decline to salmon catches on the east coast.
John Aitchison of Coastal Communities Network told the Parliamentary inquiry that:
“Salmon are declining for lots of reasons and the reasons are probably different in different places. There are no salmon farms on the east coast so the decline there will be because of a different set of reasons from the decline in the west coast where there is aquaculture.”
The Coastal Communities Network too are unable to provide any suggestions as to what such causes might be preferring to remain silent on the issue.
In 2016 scientists from the Marine Directorate wrote very much the same thing:
“There are many other factors that may cause changes in fish populations and may differ between the regions of coast that were considered. For example, catches of sea trout have declined over recent decades on both farmed and non‐farmed areas in Scotland and it is plausible that different factors are responsible in the two regions.”
Perhaps if it is so plausible to have different factors causing exactly the same decline in two different regions, then why have Marine Directorate scientists not yet provided proof of such differing causes. After all, they have been monitoring changes in the salmon catch for over seventy years and so by now they should have accumulated some real evidence to support their claims.
In my opinion, it has been far too easy for scientists and the wild fish sector to make assertions about the salmon farming industry without being seriously challenged. I would suggest that the appearance of a pro-industry specialist has caught them by surprise, and they do not know how to deal with someone promoting a different narrative backed by textbook science and some real evidence.
The truth of the matter is that the narrative about sea lice should have been settled with the publication of the Jackson paper in 2013. The problem has always been that if salmon farms are not to blame for the declines, then there is a need to look elsewhere, something the wild fish sector have always been loathe to do because looking elsewhere might incriminate themselves. Anglers have long said thatthey are not to blame for declining salmon stocks as illustrated by Dr Alan Wells of Fisheries Management Scotland who recently told the salmon inquiry that angling has only a 1% impact on wild fish. Given that the retained rod catch of salmon and sea trout has totalled over 5.9 million fish since records began in 1952, one can only wonder what has happened to the other 590 million fish that account would for the other 99%.
There’s the catch: I am using the summer lull to put together my submission to the Rural Affairs Committee inquiry. I waited until after the first round of evidence so I could comment on specific points made during the inquiry. I have just rediscovered a graph I drew a couple of years ago which is relevant to evidence given by Fisheries Management Scotland, an organisation that represents those managing salmon stocks (angling) in Scottish rivers. In his evidence Dr Alan Wells of FMS told the committee that there is a pretty clear scientific consensus that there is a potential for an impact on wild fish from sea lice from farmed fish.
Regular readers of reLAKSation will know that I will argue that there is no scientific consensus at all. The consensus that Dr Wells refers to is the one that exists between FMS and Marine Directorate scientists but as neither appear willing to talk about the science to others, they remain of the view that there is a consensus.
Of course, the only way that it is possible to determine that there is a (negative) impact on wild fish from sea lice is to monitor the status of salmon stocks in the vicinity of salmon farms. According to the Marine Directorate, the only way this can be achieved, in the absence of counters, is by monitoring catches. The reported salmon catch is published annually by the Marine Directorate about six months after the end of the previous season.
However, until 2021, FMS also published numbers of salmon caught from Scotland’s key salmon rivers in their annual review. The data has been omitted from the last three issues from 2022 to 2024. Given the importance of catches in assessing the size of the stock, this omission might seem rather strange.
The answer as to why this data is no longer included in the FMS annual review can be found in the aforementioned graph. This shows the difference in the number of salmon as reported by FMS in their annual review and the numbers reported in the official Scottish Government record. As the source of the data is the same, this discrepancy is difficult to explain. I should point out that this is the difference in catches of just those rivers that are included in the FMS annual review and is not the total figure for all of Scotland. Over the ten years form 2011, the discrepancy amounts to 8,750 fish caught more than the official Scottish Government record.
I highlighted the differences to both organisations but rather than identify why the numbers can be so different, FMS simply opted to remove the data from their annual review and hence problem solved.
It’s a shame that the Rural Affairs Committee did not ask Dr Wells what happened to their data and why they stopped including it in their annual review. Certainly, Dr Wells did not provide any evidence of declines in wild fish numbers that could be associated with local salmon farms, which surely is the main point of claims against the industry.
In his Chief Executive report in the 2024 Annual Review, Dr Wells refers to declines in salmon numbers saying that there has been a 30%-50% decline in British populations since 2006. It is unclear what the relevance is of 2006 as a date as the beginning of a time period to measure the decline of salmon stocks and why Dr Wells refers to British and not Scottish populations. Catch data shows that there has been a 70% decline in Scottish catches since catches peaked in 2010 and as most of this decline has occurred outside the Aquaculture Zone, it is unclear why FMS continue to focus their ire at salmon farming. I suppose it is easier than looking at their own actions, for example why their assessment of catches is so different to that from the Scottish Government.
Salmon in a box: The summer hiatus inevitably leads to the publication of stories in the media that would not normally merit publication. Salmon Business reports that one Tik Tokker described her experience in a Tesco store as mortifying and compared it to the embarrassment of buying toilet paper. The subject of her experience was that the salmon fillet she wanted to buy was locked in a large clear plastic security box. This is not uncommon for high value goods that are displayed in some stores. It is unclear why she was embarrassed as asking for the box to be opened is no different to asking for the security tag to be removed from clothing in most stores. Other security measures, especially of well-known branded goods include displaying tags which need to be taken to the till to be exchanged for the product.
I visit many stores and the use of security boxes is dependent on the store. It is not universal. I am not sure why this social media commentor is so concerned about one plastic box because my local Tesco convenience store has now boxed up its staff because of the number of attempts of shoplifters turning violent when confronted.
Of course, this story is not about salmon at all but the state of our society today.
