salmon – The Secret Angler

Just over ten years ago, David Graeber, an anthropologist, wrote an article about ‘bullshit jobs’, which he defines as those which are engaged in unproductive work — clerical, administrative, advertising and the like. My favourite candidate for a bullshit job is PR or, as it’s more often called these days, communication. Just about every organisation seems to have someone in a job of this kind, including those to do with fishing, the Atlantic Salmon Trust for example, whose Head of Communications is Jonathon Muir. This is part of how he describes his job

Key to restoring the species [salmon] at scale and pace is by delivering landscape-scale solutions to land managers and policymakers, in addition to harnessing nature-positive finance and philanthropic funding within the corporate sector, using wild salmon as a keystone focus species within efforts to tackle the wider twin crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Heads of communication clearly have a different way of communicating than the rest of us. ‘Landscape-scale solutions’? ‘Nature-positive finance’? Muir must spend much of his time weaving meaningless phrases from a dictionary of corporate gobbledygook. But he’s also written a piece for the Soapbox section in the September issue of Trout & Salmon, a rather Pollyannaish plea for ‘positivity’. Of course the words positive and negative are much bandied about these days, especially by lovers of obtuse language: negative is frequently used to describe someone who holds a different point of view, positive for those who have the same. According to Muir ‘We owe it to future generations of wild salmon lovers . . . to be relentlessly positive . . .’. When you consider that the Atlantic salmon population has crashed in most rivers either side of the Ocean, never mind the rapid disappearance of numerous other animal and plant species worldwide, the sixth mass extinction, it is hard to know what he means. Certainly lapsing into despair will not get us out of the environmental mess of our own making, but frittering away time on fruitless projects, as I believe the Atlantic Salmon Trust is doing, is not cause for optimism. Jonathon Muir seems to personify that foot-dragging.

To give him his due, he does refer to illegal exploitation in the T&S article, which is the first mention I’ve seen from anyone in the AST. The trouble is he is part of the ‘slow pace of action’ and telling us all to cheer up will do nothing to help. Indeed it may even give anglers an excuse to carry on with their own polluting ways — driving high-emission 4 by 4s (does JM own one?), flying around the world for fishing jollies, as encouraged by the magazines Trout & Salmon and Fly Culture among others. Anglers have a nasty habit of laying the blame anywhere but their own doorstep.

In the interests of giving the AST impetus, perhaps I can help Jonny redraft his job description, and that of all the AST employees:

Find out what’s killing the salmon. Take action to prevent it. And be quick about it.

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There’s nothing like belonging, especially when a sense of exclusivity comes with membership. In fly fishing circles, some memberships are not merely a question of stumping up the subscription. To be considered for The Flyfishers’ Club, for example, requires a proposal from a current member (as well as not being a woman — though voting to allow women to join begins today). The Houghton Club is, of course, right out for just about everyone.

If your sights are lower, payment of a wad of cash can get you into some esteemed institutions. The Atlantic Salmon Trust, a charity dedicated to saving the wild Atlantic salmon, offers membership of its Salmon Club for £250 a year. But if you want to enter the rarified levels of the AST you can apply for membership of the President’s Club, provided that you have £25000 to spare over five years. The President, by the way, is Earl Percy, heir apparent to the Dukedom of Northumberland and whose pater, the current Duke, was a director of the Houghton until the end of 2022. Blue-blooded indeed. As a matter of fact, two of four the vice presidents are members of the peerage too; the overall impression is that the AST is quite posh. Worth 25 grand to belong?

According to the website, that large sum of money buys you influence and no doubt invitations to receptions. You get a ‘seat at the table’, the implication being that you affect decisions the Trust takes. How having plenty of money qualifies Club members to guide research policy I invite the Chairman, Peter Landale, to explain. At one time the AST was run mainly by retired military officers, not especially qualified for such a job. Landale, I believe, is a landowner, presumably there as a figurehead with a financial interest in salmon fishing rather than any inherent expertise on salmon populations. I suspect that the primary motivation of donors is good fishing, with few awkward questions asked about the health of ecosystems.

It’s a good fund-raising wheeze I suppose. The important question is how well the AST puts the Clubbers’ money to work. I’ve already expressed doubts over the lack of urgency in the work of the Trust and the other agencies involved. One of its projects is called Save the Spring, a stock supplementation programme claimed to increase numbers of fish that run in the spring — those that have remained at sea for more than one year and are consequently larger and more popular with anglers. Stocks of spring fish have suffered the biggest falls. This project is different to the usual hatchery method, which has been shown ineffective. Wild smolts are captured then transferred to sea water tanks, reared to maturity, and finally released back into their home river to spawn. The idea is to cut out the going-to-sea stage where the majority of salmon now perish, reasons unclear though I’ve suggested that illegal fishing is a likely culprit.

This idea of partial rearing is interesting but mature fish are yet to be released so we won’t know whether it works for some time. Even if it does — and hatcheries have some temporary success — I don’t see how this can lead to the restoration of a healthy, self-sustaining population when the marine problems are still unclear. Meddling with natural lifecycles in this way has a poor track record. Much better to address the root problem of marine mortality. I see little effort in this direction.

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Tag: salmon

The AST’s Head of Waffle

All the President’s cash