Salar the leaper the final chapter

[Heym SR20]

I in no ways pretend to be a fisherman of any skill. I fish occasionally - the odd day or two a year for salmon, and the odd evening or walk to a hill loch fir trout. Sadly the results are few and far between. And this is mostly to man’s ineptitude and in particular that of those who have the ability to protect our rivers and ecosystems for the greed and depravity of others. I have plenty of friends who fish and they are all very sad. And to think that a generation or two ago salmon could be caught by their hundreds every day in nets on our rivers. I rather fear our children will be writing similar articles about many other wild species that we all love.

Salar the Leaper : The final chapter?

Research shows that the decline of salmon populations began much earlier than we used to believe – but can our efforts today save wild salmon from ...

fieldsports-journal.com

 

[opticron1]

Having fished for Salmon for many years, occasionally successfully! It drives me to despair when I see the lack of action by our so called Governments - we have endless study groups/short life working groups/scientific reviews......but at the end of the day all I hear is the can getting kicked down the road.
Despite the Atlantic Salmon being put on the red list of at risk species, nothing will happen, but endless amounts of time and money will be spent on reintroducing non threatened species because they make good photo opportunities.
Not many votes in fish, but plenty of gullible idiots will go for the nice fluffy animals!

 

[Heym SR20]

Once upon a time, and for many hundreds of years you could put nets in the mouths of our rivers and catch salmon. Indeed they were so plentiful that it was the food of the poor.

And all you needed to do was to hang up the nets at low tide. Go home, sit on your arse and come back at the next low tide and pick up the fish.

In many places you didn’t even need nets, just build a stone fish trap that would do the job for many decades.

Many fish were caught. But enough got through to spawn so that the fish for future years to be hatched, they wpuld feed in the rivers abd then disappear out to sea and spend a few years growing into good sized fished.

But then some bright spark, who didn’t like sitting on his arse most of time decided that it would be far far far more efficient to catch a few wild salmon, milk them for spawn and then spend many weeks fretting about salmon parr growing in fish tanks to which you have to pump lots of water, and provide lots of food and give them lots of drugs to stop them getting ill.

And in the meantime you make some cages in some freshwater lochs and you transport the young parr to the lochs so they can grow bigger.

Whilst all this is happening you have big boats going out to sea to catch lots of little fish which you grind up in a factory and reform to make into lots of little pellets that you put in plastic bags and put on big lorries to transport to the fish farms.

Whilst the little fish are growing you are also big nets that go in the sea lochs. Trouble is you need good tidal flows to keep the fish healthy so you have lots of cost of big anchors etc etc. oh and don’t forget about the Atlantic gales so you had better make those cages really strong.

Of course we forget about all the work that goes into making the steel, nets boats etc.

Then you have to take the young salmon from the freshwater lochs to sea lochs using yet more boats, trucks and then bigger boats or often helicopters.

And then once out in the sea cages you have to feed them every day and the fish need several kgs of fish pellets for every kg of fish that is grown.

And finally after a couple of years work by lots of people you have a load of fish that you can eat.

Whereas if we had just left them alone, our polluted our rivers and seas we would still have large numbers of wild salmon running up our rivers which could be easily caught and then eaten as per how it used to.

And we call this progress.

 

[Apthorpe]

Once upon a time, and for many hundreds of years you could put nets in the mouths of our rivers and catch salmon. Indeed they were so plentiful that it was the food of the poor.

When the population was about 3 million.

Whereas if we had just left them alone, our polluted our rivers and seas we would still have large numbers of wild salmon running up our rivers which could be easily caught and then eaten as per how it used to.

And we call this progress.

We call this a misconception. Salmon farming, while a revolting abomination, is not the cause of the problem (according to your article). The root cause is that having a large population, especially not one of the point of starvation and in total poverty, is incompatible with the survival of salmon and too many other species. The colossal waste and consumption generated by urbanised population means industrialised pollution of fresh water and industrial expoitation of marine resources.
The nub of it is that 70-odd million and counting people cannot inhabit the UK without trashing its environment. Any policy to increase the population of these isles is ecological and economic insanity.

 

[LuckyEddie]

I recently counted 30 cormorants upstream of the railway bridge at Montrose on the South Esk.
Not every dive was successful that I could see in the couple of hours that I was there but there were a number of fish caught (although not all would be salmon).
Then we have the increasing number of dolphins and orcas in the area which would also have an impact. If not on the number of fish getting through then certainly on the breeding condition of those fish due to harassment by predators.

 

[Ratel]

Thank those that tagged salmon to see where they travelled to. This enabled the big boats to track and catch them. Might have been the putinites that did the damage.

 

[Heym SR20]

I recently counted 30 cormorants upstream of the railway bridge at Montrose on the South Esk.
Not every dive was successful that I could see in the couple of hours that I was there but there were a number of fish caught (although not all would be salmon).
Then we have the increasing number of dolphins and orcas in the area which would also have an impact. If not on the number of fish getting through then certainly on the breeding condition of those fish due to harassment by predators.

If you look at places like Alaska where they still have huge Salmon runs there are large numbers of other wildlife that thrive, including big bears, dolphins and orcas etc . There is also a thriving wild salmon fishery that exports tinned salmon around the world.

 

[Heym SR20]

When the population was about 3 million.

We call this a misconception. Salmon farming, while a revolting abomination, is not the cause of the problem (according to your article). The root cause is that having a large population, especially not one of the point of starvation and in total poverty, is incompatible with the survival of salmon and too many other species. The colossal waste and consumption generated by urbanised population means industrialised pollution of fresh water and industrial expoitation of marine resources.
The nub of it is that 70-odd million and counting people cannot inhabit the UK without trashing its environment. Any policy to increase the population of these isles is ecological and economic insanity.

So we should stick our heads in the **** and carry on as before according to your logic???. It should be perfectly possible to having both a large population and thriving wildlife.

 

[shakey jake]

the only thing that i think has hammered salmon is mans greed, pollute the rivers, rob the sea of anything we can get, grow crap salmon incages full of pests, disease and waste. then blame the predators that havent got much else to feed on for the demise. oh and better ban anglers from keeping any

 

[Apthorpe]

So we should stick our heads in the **** and carry on as before according to your logic???.

Either that, or my preference is to close the door and permit the population to slowly decline. Either of which is certainly not a rapid enough solution for the salmon.

It should be perfectly possible to having both a large population and thriving wildlife.

I don't see how it is, allowing for any reasonable standard of living. A large population would be about 10 million and a billion globally.
Name a country which does, or ever did, have a large population (density) and thriving wildlife.
The pressure on habitats is too great, before you even consider the extractive industries necessary, the areas built over and so on.

 

[Heym SR20]

Thank those that tagged salmon to see where they travelled to. This enabled the big boats to track and catch them. Might have been the putinites that did the damage.

Or, as I am led to believe, the British government giving licences to Norwegian fishing boats to fish for wild salmon off the east coast of Scotland.

 

[Cyres]

I can remember the nets on the Tweed. They were brought off a d the salmon run still continues to decline.
The decline if the Atlantic salmon just reflects the slow but inciduous destruction of the environment.
Salmon in the Severn are almost gone forever. The weirs and alike were always there and there was a good stock of fish so something else changed.
Water quality and flow rates are vastly different. For example the Rea brook is now almost unrecognisable from what it was I the late 70s. Now in the summer a tiny trickle. Original fish population wiped out by a huge slurry spillage restocked with alien fish eg grayling.
What's also going under the radar is the nigh on collapse in eels. As a kid we always fished for them on the Rea and River Vvrnwy and easy to catch. Now all but vanished.

D

 

[Ratel]

Water quality and flow rates are vastly different. For example the Rea brook is now almost unrecognisable from what it was I the late 70s. Now in the summer a tiny trickle. Original fish population wiped out by a huge slurry spillage restocked with alien fish eg grayling.
What's also going under the radar is the nigh on collapse in eels. As a kid we always fished for them on the Rea and River Vvrnwy and easy to catch. Now all but vanished.

D

I remember Mink hunting on the Rea brook in the 70's, it was up to your armpits and deeper in some spots, a beautiful stream then.

 

[Cyres]

I fished it from 1970 until late 80's. I caught 2 dace at 1lb 2oz that's was just 2 oz below the then British record.
I did my final year BSc research project on the Ecology of Dace and Chub on the Rea brook. I had chub marked for v many years until the slurry wiped out everything.
It was the saddest day of my life when I walked down the river and saw thousands of dead fish. The farmer should have been jailed.
ST restocked it but added grayling which had never been present.
I have never fished it since. I do still have all the photos I took as part of my research project. The dace had an exceptional growth record but I don't have a copy of my original thesis.
D

 

[devon deer stalker]

There is far more to it than that article states.
I'm afraid the Atlantic Salmon has reached such low level population densities it will go the same way as the Dodo, and us, the rod fisherman has always been the target, makes me wonder why I paid £90.40 to renew my ever increasing fee.
Thankfully we still have a fair population of Sea Trout in my local river, but their numbers aren't what they used to be.