If you’re standing knee-deep in rising floodwater, you don’t want to be worrying about the kind of umbrella to hold above your head. Yet this habit of looking in the wrong direction seems to sum up the work of the Missing Salmon Alliance’s constituent bodies. They tell us, ad infinitum, that Atlantic salmon are in decline (yes, we know) and that marine survival is the problem, while running projects concerned with rivers and inshore waters. It is of course obvious that the freshwater environment is important but this is not where the salmon are dying.
This January the MSA ran a conference titled Wild Salmon Connections held at Fishmongers’ Hall, home of a company that promotes a ‘flourishing fishing industry’ (no conflict there). According to the website blurb, the conference’s goal was to activate an urgent, renewed international focus on wild salmon, inspiring action to secure thriving wild salmon at the heart of healthy ecosystems — the usual platitudinous stuff in other words. Youtube videos of the presentations are available. It makes an unpromising start with a short film offering the most recent buzzphrase ‘cold, clean water’, some attractive footage and ‘hope’, followed by a message from the King and the usual booster talk from various personages unfamiliar to me; they even ushered on a few schoolchildren to encourage the grown-ups. As with all ‘keynote addresses’, they had little new to say, although Dieter Helm made some interesting remarks on catchment modelling. The question is, who’s doing this modelling? The perpetual enjoinder to pass on environmental assets to the next generation in the same or better condition seems doomed to fail. Environmental decline has become a standard.
What of the talks proper? The series of presentations that concentrated on fisheries bycatch and aquaculture were the most novel. Bycatch and illegal fishing get very little attention but are very likely to be significant factors in salmon decline, possibly the most significant. Sophie Elliott from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust recognises that marine survival is the primary problem, that the salmon is a protected species under law but that nothing is being done. That’s the first time I’ve seen any MSA person say this. She goes on to admit there is no salmon research at sea but there is supposed to be monitoring of the bycatch of commercial fishing vessels. The startling observation that there is almost no data or monitoring associated with salmon bycatch shows the lack of interest from governments. Given the intensity of commercial fishing effort along salmon migration routes, the absence of this information is an ocean-sized hole in our knowledge. ‘Fumbling around in the dark,’ as Elliott puts it. Illegal fishing is not even mentioned.
Hannah Rudd, Angling Trust’s Policy & Advocacy Manager (don’t you love these job titles?) follows on with the observation that government Fisheries Management Plans ignore salmon, as do the Marine Protected Areas. She points out that all the catchment conservation work will be wasted if the problems at sea are unresolved. So two worthwhile talks in a row.
The final two talks of the session are from the aquaculture industry (boo, hiss). Most biologists accept that salmon farming has an impact on wild salmon, particularly via escapes and lice infestations and treatment. Listening to people from the industry talk, one generally gets the impression of greenwashing in full flow. They excuse their practices’ shortcomings through sleight of phrase, frequently hiding behind corporate waffle. But to give the two speakers their due, they do seem to tacitly accept the environmental damage they do. There are proposals to introduce containment vessels such that the farmed fish are sealed from the surrounding ocean but this is in the future and costs are high. Industry hates high costs (except cost to the environment).
Yet the industry will always find ways to undermine itself by spurious comparisons. Anne Anderson (Scottish Fish Farms) compares the size of the oceans with the area of farmed land in Scotland, and claims that salmon farming is far more efficient than livestock farming on land. Boss of a Norwegian aquaculture firm which has invested in experimental closed systems, Sondre Eide, sporting distracting little hair plaits, also talks about producing sustainable food to feed the world. Both neglect to mention that salmon is a luxury food and certainly not the best way to nourish an expanding population as they claim. Even if the efficiency claim is valid, the fish removed from the seas to make feed pellets is still a less efficient use of marine resources. As for comparisons with land agriculture, well, salmon don’t swim in fields. Agriculture certainly pollutes though: if it doesn’t get the fish in the rivers, and if aquaculture doesn’t get them as smolts, then on current evidence, commercial fishing probably will.
In the final Q&A, chair Ella McSweeney does a good job of pressing the aquaculture representatives, particularly the evasive Anderson. Robert Otto of the Atlantic Salmon Federation in Canada fears that movement to containment is too slow to save the wild salmon, and should it not work, what happens then? Huge aquaculture containers in the open ocean may pose even greater risk of accident than inshore open pens.
I’ve looked briefly at some of the other presentations (there are too many to wade through complete). I think the inclusion of a talk from BELU, a bottled water company, is questionable. Although they make a big thing about their sustainability, in the end recycled plastic bottles still shed microplastics into the environment and usually cannot be recycled again. Bottled mineral water is just another ‘lifestyle’ product that we can do without. Jonathon Muir, AST marketing man, plugs a film by the US flask company, Yeti, not yet released. I’m always suspicious when corporations sponsor conservation organisations. The money’s welcome but you risk providing cover for their environmental impacts, as in Thames Water’s past association with the Wild Trout Trust.
The conference fizzles out with a couple of speakers urging action, which is how these things always end. They are no more than pep talks, to get out there, get together, do something. The most obvious concrete action would be to find out how many salmon are being killed by commercial boats, carelessly or deliberately, the implicit conclusion of Elliott and Rudd’s talks. This would require immediate and expensive government action. How likely is that?
The Secret Angler 