Pack in: In my opinion what makes the president of the RSPCA to be no different to a misinformed activist is that in his attack on the salmon farming industry that appeared in the Mail on Sunday, TV celebrity Chris Packham has not made any effort to go and see the issues for himself. Instead, he says that he is working with the RSPCA and asking them to conduct a review and then shut down the RSPCA Assured scheme. This is after seeing one video filmed by an activist which he describes as abhorrent and evidence of appalling levels of cruelty at Scotland’s fish farms. Rather than request to see the farm for himself, Chris Packham has resorted to sharing his view in a national newspaper.
However, in his desire to express his views to the public, Mr Packham is not being entirely honest because firstly he does not admit to being a vegan and therefore is against all forms of farming animals for food. He clearly finds farms abhorrent even if they are certified by RSPCA Assured. That is his choice, but vegans are very much a minority of public opinion.
Whilst condemning salmon farmers for appalling cruelty, he is also supporting a campaign run by Feedback, Wild Fish and the US Eko to persuade restaurant chain Wagamama to take salmon off their menu. In his rush to campaign against salmon farming, perhaps Mr Packham is unaware that Wild Fish are the representative organisation of salmon and trout anglers in the UK and whose membership and others are responsible for the premature deaths of nearly 6 million wild salmon and sea trout after being dragged round at the end of a hook by rod and line. The exhausted fish are then cracked on the head in what even some anglers agree is an extremely cruel sport.
What is surprising is that Mr Packham agreed to be president of the RSPCA In the first place. Was he not aware that the RSPCA endeavour to improve the welfare of farmed animals through their assurance scheme. Perhaps he didn’t research what he was signing up to. Mr Packham had already written about salmon farming in a book which was also poorly researched and despite seemingly never having visited a farm himself. Instead, he relies on the established narrative of a vocal minority who pursue their own agendas. In his latest criticism that was published in the Mail of Sunday, Mr Packham writes that there is a global movement of people opposed to salmon farming for ecological and environmental reasons. Clearly, he should do some research because the majority of those opposed to salmon farming are anglers or NIMBYS.
Mr Packham says that if he can’t persuade the RSPCA to scrap their assurance schemes then he will consider quitting his post. Frankly, he should not wait to go because he has done little to improve the lot of all animals. The RSPCA still get a call about animal cruelty every 5 mins. That is over 100,000 calls a year. Mr Packham’s, concerns don’t appear to be about the 100,000 animals these calls concern, but instead he is focused on one video which is not representative of salmon farming at all. Mr Packham says that there would be a national outcry if the images were of sheep or cows with such horrific wounds. Everyday there are examples of cruelty, as illustrated by the many telephone calls the RSPCA receive, and yet there is no national outcry.
If Mr Packham would care to look closely at the farmed animals he sees grazing in the fields, he will eventually find one or two with issues. The fish in the video are promoted as being typical of farmed fish but in fact the handful of fish filmed represent a tiny percentage point of the fish in the farm. This is why Mr Packham should go and see salmon farming for himself.
What is really interesting is that the comments columns of online newspapers that have covered salmon farming usually contain many highly critical comments of the industry but this time, it is Mr Packham himself who is in receipt of many readers’ ire.
Fishing Friend: FishPal, the website that allows anglers to book and pay for fishing, has announced that it is extending its services to both the Republic and Northern Ireland. They say that this means UK anglers unfamiliar with rivers in and fishing infrastructure across the Irish Sea can easily discover the best fishing and then buy the relevant permits without having to tour local fishing tackle shops.
What is of interest about this announcement is that Fish Pal’s expansion coincides with publication of a report by the Rivers Trust revealing that Ireland’s rivers are in the best overall ecological health of any waters in Britian and Ireland. A total of 1,602 river stretches were found to have reached a good or high ecological health status.
According to the Rivers Trust rivers are divided into many shorter stretches (known as river waterbodies) so that the changing health of the rivers can be observed along its length. Often headwaters are healthier then stretches downstream as the river becomes affected by different activities as it travels further away from the source.
Whilst FishPal say that 1,602 river stretches were found to be in good ecological health, the Rivers Trust report states that just over half of all river stretches (1602 in total) achieved good ecological health. It is unclear whether the 1,602 figure is half the river stretches or that only 801 are of good health. The report also states that nearly 63% of river stretches (1023 in total) are affected by agriculture. If 1023 stretches represents 63% then the total for Ireland would be 1623 or 1602 thereabouts.
In Northern Ireland, there are 450 river stretches of which 31% achieved a good ecological status.
In Wales, the report implies that there are 714 river stretches of which 44% achieved a good overall status (not the same as having a good ecological health).
In England, there are 3,553 river stretches of which only 15% achieve a good of higher ecological health status.
The River Trust report does not provide a figure for the number of river stetches in Scotland – the data is provided by Fisheries Management Scotland. They can only say that 57.2% of river stretches are assessed as being in good overall condition.
The Rivers Trust have drawn a map of the UK and Ireland showing in the deeper blue colour, the river stretches that are of the best ecological health.
However, anglers using the FishPal website are not really looking for rivers of good ecological health, they are instead looking for rivers than have plenty of salmon for them to catch. It would seem that the ecological health of Irish rivers is a better story to tell than the state of Irish salmon stocks.
In 2024 42 out of 147 Irish rivers were open to fishing as usual as a sustainable surplus had been identified. A further 39 rivers were open for catch and release only whilst 66 rivers were closed to angling.
The previous year, the same number of rivers were open to fishing, whether catching to kill or catch and release. However, in 2023, 48 rivers were open to full fishing of which 6 were downgraded in 2024.
The actual catch of salmon from Irish rivers was not published until July last year so the 2023 data is yet to be made available, In 2022. 10,348 salmon were caught and killed and a further 12, 313 were caught and released (54%). The number of fish caught and killed has remained similar for five years, Perhaps, FishPal want to attract those anglers who are still keen to kill their catch but are deterred from doing so.
UK anglers make up the third largest group of overseas anglers fishing in Ireland (699) but only just, although a further 346 declared themselves as coming from England, 56 from Scotland and 38 from Wales. 676 anglers came from France and 650 from the US. Because anglers fishing in Scotland don’t have to buy a permit, such information is not available about angling in Scotland.
I suspect that the real draw of fishing in Ireland is not the good ecological health of the rivers but the fact that 42 rivers do not have a catch and release policy.
Hopefully, the 2023 Irish catch will be available soon and it will be then possible to see whether the collapse seen in Scotland is repeated there.
Missing salmon: The Atlantic Salmon Trust has said that a new paper published by the Missing Salmon Alliance brings us closer to understanding the decline in marine survival of wild Atlantic salmon. The paper looks at changes to zooplankton over recent decades and concludes that the energy provided from the zooplankton has declined. However, that the distribution of plankton has changed comes as no surprise since a national programme of long-term monitoring of plankton has previously identified significant changes to how plankton is distributed through the seas around the UK. At the same time, whilst the new paper has identified greater declines south and west of the UK, there are still more positive signs in the northern waters through which salmon migrate.
Climate change is now often highlighted as a cause of declines of wild salmon yet, the declines began in the early 1970s over fifty years ago. This new paper is by those involved in the Missing Salmon Alliance and it could be premature to suggest that changing zooplankton might be a primary cause in the declines just because of the strong association with those trying to assess the problems. My own view is that the declines in the UK may also be linked to the development of the North Sea oil sector but sadly the wild fish sector is more interested in the issues they believe they can fix rather than those they can’t so its puzzling that the Missing Salmon Alliance have pursued this plankton study.
I have previously mentioned the Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan Science Advisory Board and the Wild Salmon Strategy Science and Evidence Board meeting minutes which were posted on the Scottish Government website. The minutes were from meetings held early in 2023 and the last meeting mentioned that the next one would be held in November 2023. I therefore requested copies of the minutes and have now received those from the Science and Evidence Board meeting held on November 21st last year. The meeting discussed various aspects of stocking, all of which have been discussed endlessly in the past. It is unclear how the discussion is going to help wild salmon if the same issues are discussed repeatedly.
There was no mention of placing a ban on killing wild salmon. Presumably, those pursuing the Wild Salmon Strategy would not want to upset the anglers by suggesting that they have anything to do with the declines in wild salmon numbers. Following the November meeting the Science and Evidence Board met again on 28th February this year and the Implementation Plan Delivery Group met on June 13th. Although the minutes for these meetings have been drafted, they still have to be approved and are not due to be made available until the end of this month.
If it is taking over four months to approve the meeting minutes, what hope is there for wild salmon’s future. There seems no sense of urgency unless the issue is directed at salmon farming, the one area that actually has absolute minimal impact on wild fish stocks.
The paper can be found at: https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/advance-article/doi/10.1093/icesjms/fsae077/7697287?login=false