Missing sea trout
LIKE most people in the UK who have an interest in fish farming, I always find time to read the reLAKSation blog that comes from the pen of Martin Jaffa. It often contains useful information from publications that I don’t follow, and it is never shy about setting out its own distinctive points of view.
Thus, as soon as I was alerted to the publication of Loch Maree’s Missing Sea Trout: Are salmon farms to blame? I ordered a copy online from Amazon, and with characteristically speedy action it was delivered the next morning.
The book is short at 132 pages, and in an evening of indulgence I uncorked a previously unattended Christmas present, and settled down to read the book at a single sitting.
The evening was enjoyable, and in terms of increasing my knowledge and insights into the slightly murky world of the book’s topic material, I thought it well worthwhile.
For the purists who are looking for an academic critique, I should say that the book was obviously written in a hurry, although the research behind it must have taken many months of painstaking work.
My guess would be that Jaffa was already well into the project but wrote and published at the gallop to try to get the book out in time for the Scottish parliament’s Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform committee’s consideration of the environmental impacts of salmon farming.
If I am correct, that objective may have been unsuccessful, although the author can hardly be criticised for trying.
The book is structured more like a long essay rather than as a rigidly contrived series of self-contained chapters. It sets off very well and provides a readable and engaging narrative for those who have an interest in the subject area.
It tends to falter slightly towards the end and becomes more fragmented as attention is given to some afterthoughts. Under other circumstances, these might have been introduced in the earlier text or added as footnotes or appendices. But that is easy to see with hindsight.
The thesis of the book is that the evidence, taken overall, does not support the conclusion that the decline in wild sea trout and wild salmon populations in Scotland are due to major impacts arising from salmon aquaculture.
The author is fully correct, of course, but the interesting feature of his book is that he has trawled through previously unexamined evidence from ‘soft literature’ sources, such as long-past editions of Trout & Salmon magazine and reports of the District Salmon Fisheries Boards, to build his case.
The book is not without its flaws, but the work it pulls together provides a significant and new summary of information, which later authors on the topic will much appreciate.