New Knowledge: iLAKS reports that Anders Lamberg of Scandinavian Nature Surveillance has told a meeting that ‘New knowledge will always meet resistance from old truth and myths.’ He is not wrong as my own experience can certainly attest.
Anders, a member of the Salmon Tracking research group, initiated and funded by salmon farming companies from PO3 and PO4, told an information update meeting that the myth that Southern Norway is a sea trout mecca is broken. Sørlandet has often been highlighted as the best area for sea trout, which is attributed to the absence of salmon farms. However, research by Salmon Tracking, using computer chips, acoustics, and camera surveillance, to study the development of wild fish populations and migration patterns, has found that sea trout are not as prolific in the southern areas as many claim.
Instead, the researchers have found that sea trout are actually doing well in the heart of the salmon farming areas of PO3 and PO4. When sea trout and salmon populations are considered together, numbers are much better than the media reports suggest, or the models predict.
Salmon Tracking also presented new research on salmon showing that the smolts migrate earlier and faster into the fjords than expected. They say that the results of their research show the smolts actually take half the time to pass through the fjords than estimated by the Institute of Marine Research models which is set at 40 days. The researchers also have found that as the smolts migrate down the fjords they ty to stay in a flow of brackish water up to 3m below the surface thus they are less exposed to sea lice. This may explain another finding that salmon from the innermost rivers tend not to encounter sea lice until they are relatively far out in the fjords.
Whilst critics will probably argue that as this research is funded by local farmers, the results must be tainted. However, Salmon Tracking includes researchers from Akvaplan-Niva, Consulting Biologists, Scandinavian Nature Surveillance, AquaLife, Biota, Inaq, NTMY, NUMBU, and the Universities of Bergen, Stavanger and Tromso.
Data deficiency: It was just six months ago on 15th May 2024 that the Scottish Government published the wild salmon and sea trout fishery statistics for 2023. The 2024 fishing season had already been underway for four months. Since anglers can fish the river Tweed until the end of November, at the time of writing, anglers are still out stalking these fish that have returned to the river to breed. Meanwhile, the fishing season had ended for most rivers by mid-October, although there is no consistency of what constitutes a fishing season as illustrated by the following selection of rivers:
Spey – Feb 11 to Sept 30
Tay – Jan 15 to Oct 15
Tweed – Feb 1 to Nov 30
Helmsdale – Jan 11 to Sep 30
Dee Upper – Feb 1- to Sep 30
Dee Lower – Feb 1 to Oct 15
Doon – Feb 11 to Oct 31
Annan – Feb 25 to Nov 15
Ewe – Feb 11 to Oct 31
Eachaig – May 1 to Oct 31
Surely is it not time for a standard country wide salmon fishing season to be implemented and since spring stocks are considered the most threatened, that the start of the season should be delayed until at least April running to the end of September.
Whilst the salmon farming industry is expected to provide almost real time data, why do we have to wait so long for wild fish data to be published? Why is that salmon catches cannot be reported at least weekly so by the end of the season, the total catch is known, and decisions can then be made as to whether any measures should be put in place before the start of the next fishing season. This should not be impossible given that whilst the Scottish Government appears unwilling to report the numbers of fish caught, others seem happier to do so.
The Courier reports that ‘experts’ have declared that numbers of fish caught from the river Tay are up around by 30% meaning that anglers have had a bumper year with an approximate catch of between 6,000-7,000 fish. One proprietor has said that they have had the best season for 15 years.
The Tweedbeats website estimates 9,300-9,600 fish from the river Tweed.
The fishing reports section of Trout & Salmon includes the following catch numbers:
Dee – end of Sept total catch 2096 (1512 in 2023).
Beauly – Lower River 425 (274 in 2023)
Carron – one named beat 128 (100 in 2023)
Cassley – 128 (111 in 2023)
Conon – one named beat 170 (106 in 2023)
Findhorn – selected beats 926 (540 in 2023)
Halladale – 443 (740 in 2023)
Helmsdale – 1196 (1107 in 2023)
Ness – named beat 201 (162 in 2023)
Oykel – Lower River 623 (630 in 2023)
Tay – estimated 6,000-7,000
Thurso – 1262 (up about 100 on 2023)
The Trout and Salmon magazine fishing reports need to be supplied well ahead of time to allow sufficient time for the magazine to be published in print. This does not prevent quicker methods publishing confirmed data. For example, this week the Spey Salmon Fishery Board posted online that the official catch for 2023 was 5,341 salmon and grilse. If the Spey Fishery Board can publish their total catch data 12 days before the last fishery on the Tweed has closed, why cannot all fishery boards and others do the same?
A side issue is that the Spey reports only 560 sea trout caught this year compared with a five-year average of 1171 and a ten-year average of 1598 fish. They say that the numbers reflect sustained and troubling decline. Of course, the decline of sea trout is laid at the door of salmon farmers but as one Spey proprietor told the RAIC committee there are no salmon farms near the Spey.
I suspect that the main reason why it takes so long to publish wild salmon catch data is that the system is simply outdated with the Marine Directorate sending out in 2023 a total of 2,149 forms to proprietors and receiving back 1,963 which equates to 91%, the lowest return rate since records began in 1997. Of these 817 contained data whilst 1,146 were returned but recorded no catches.
The following graph shows the number of forms issued (blue), the number of forms with data (orange) and the number of forms with no data (green). What is interesting is that the number of forms issued has increased from 1997 from 1856 to 2149? At the same time, the number of forms returned to the Marine Directorate with catch data has fallen from 1072 to 817, whilst the number of forms without data has increased from 701 to 1146.
We know wild salmon are in decline based on the catch data, but it is unclear how the increasing number of forms issued (nearly 300) has influenced the data is unclear. Over the same time period 445 forms no longer include data. Is this because no fish have been caught or because fish have not been recorded. Perhaps deciphering these changes is why the Marine Directorate takes so long to publish the official data.
Rue…l: I was sent a link taken from Twitter or whatever it is called now posted by retired lawyer Ewen Kennedy, a leading supporter of activist Don Staniford. It concerned the river Ruel in Argyll. Salmon Scotland have supported a project to improve the riverbanks of the River Ruel through the Wild Fisheries Fund and thus improve the habitat for spawning salmon and young fish. A video of the project can be viewed at https://www.wildfisheriesfund.co.uk/projects/river-ruel-fish-habitat-improvement-project.
Meanwhile, Mr Kennedy has written: ‘Hypocrisy on speed., the Ruel was one of the first rivers wrecked by a fish farm, Pan Fish decades ago’. He then referred to an article he wrote years ago in which he discussed the relocation of a salmon farm from Loch Riddon (Loch Ruel) because anglers and locals were reporting serious declines in catches from the river Ruel and attributing problems to chemical treatments and sea lice from the local farm operated by Pan Fish. This had had a direct economic effect on the local economy and several hotels had closed.
Three points jump out at me from Mr Kennedy’s comments. These are:
- Anglers and locals were reporting serious declines in catches and attributing problems to the local fish farm
- The River Ruel was one of the first rivers to be wrecked by a fish farm
- The fish farm was operated by Pan Fish
I have previously mentioned that the Scottish Parliament’s RAIC Committee are currently winding up yet another inquiry into salmon farming. Like all those beforehand it was initiated by anglers and locals attributing problems to local fish farms. The salmon industry has suffered for over forty years of having to justify itself because anglers and locals are all too happy to attribute any perceived problems to the salmon farming industry, but they do so without a shred of real evidence.
In the case of the river Ruel, the claims of the whingeing and whining anglers and locals are simply untrue as illustrated by the salmon and grilse catch data from the river Ruel from 1952 onwards.
Anyone looking at this graph doesn’t need the trendline to see that catches of salmon and grilse caught from the river Ruel have been in decline since records began in 1952. According to both the Scotland Aquaculture website as well as former employees, the only salmon farm that salmon migrating down Loch Riddon had to pass was West Kyles of Bute belonging to Captain Proes’s Kyles of Bute salmon in 1985. It is a farm I visited myself in 1989.
The graph clearly shows that salmon catches from the River Ruel were in decline for the thirty years before salmon farming came to the area. In fact, catches seemed to improve for a while after the farm arrived but then fell again into decline. The most recent catches have been extremely poor with just one salmon and three grilse in 2023.
Mr Kennedy says that the river Ruel was one of the first rivers to be wrecked by salmon farming. The evidence from the graph simply does not support his claim. This is typical of most criticism aimed at the industry. It just isn’t backed up with hard evidence.
Mr Kennedy refers to the farm being run by Pan Fish, who were operating in Scotland between 2004 and 2007. Even if his claims that anglers and locals were attributing the wild fish declines to chemicals and sea lice, the graph shows that the catches were already then in terminal decline.
However, and the exact date is unclear, the farm was shut down by 2008, if not before. Since then, migrating salmon from the Ruel have had to pass by just one other farm established in 2010 which is located more towards the open sea meaning that migrating salmon are not forced to pass nearby. Since 2008, catches from the river Ruel have not improved but rather have declined further.
If Mr Kennedy wants to know who wrecked the wild fish stocks in the river Ruel he should look to himself and all those who complain about salmon farming because they have forced attention onto the salmon farming industry and deflected it away from any opportunity to investigate the real reasons why wild salmon stocks are firmly on the road to local extinction.