MARCHING TO A DIFFERENT BEAT
Why working with fish farms is the best option for anglers
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It could be said that our approach to the complex issue of salmon farming in Scotland has followed just such a pattern for the last three decades.
Ever since the birth of the industry in the pristine inlets of the western Highlands in the late 1980s the response from those who run our wild salmon rivers and those who fish in them has been to undertake a relentless media campaign against the industry and its regulators – and I know because for years I was one of those slinging copious quantities of mud.
Despite a lack of success, that narrative has barely changed in those three decades, and hardly a week goes by without another sensational headline claiming that the fish farming industry is wreaking environmental destruction on Scotland’s western coastline. Any other factors which might contribute to the dwindling numbers of salmon in our rivers have been conveniently ignored as poorly researched evidence is tossed around in a melee of prop-
Above: Angler Jon Gibb fishing on his beloved River Lochy. Centre: Releasing hand-reared wild young salmon back into the Lochy in a project part-funded by fish farmers. Top right: Releasing smolts into the river.
aganda and spin. In the process, professional egos get bruised and any chance of actual progress soon disappears in a haze of resentment, confusion and mutual antipathy.
But there is another way. In the Lochaber region where I live and work, we have demonstrated that we can break the cycle of mutual distrust to find a peaceful and constructive meeting point where fishermen and salmon farmers can both co-exist and thrive. Not only that but we have also shown how this highly profitable industry, which brings well-paid and skilled jobs into our remotest communities, can provide the expertise and funding to kick-start the recovery of our most vulnerable salmon rivers.
Don’t get me wrong – aquaculture carries an inevitable risk and impact on the environment, as do the other industries that often share the river corridor, such as hydro, forestry and terrestrial farming. All the major fish farm companies accept that. The challenge is to manage that risk and work together to find realistic solutions in areas that prove particu-
larly problematic. That is, assuming you accept the political reality that Scotland’s largest food export industry, employing 8,000 people in fragile Highland communities and with an economic value of £2 billion, is here to stay. Even were it not for the Scottish Government’s stated determination to double the output of Scottish salmon farms by 2030, I would suggest that Scotland’s fish farms are going nowhere.
Yet instead of seeing fish farms as the problem, how about seeing them as part of the solution? The key lies in two huge payments that the fish farm industry currently makes – the first is the £3.5 million that the Crown Estate levies for seabed leases; the second is the £1.7 million SEPA also nets in operating licences each year from the same fish farming companies.
Historically, most of this money is spent on bolstering the bureaucratic machines that power these quangos, but it doesn’t need to be that way. For instance, the expenditure of the £3.5m Crown Estate revenue is soon to be devolved to local councils, which presents a huge opportunity to re-channel that money back into wild fisheries rehabilitation and enhancement.
If the wild fish sector were to approach councils and secure even a fraction of these eye-watering sums to fund restoration projects, then companies such as Marine Harvest privately concede that they would be happy to match funds against it for research and management projects. Such activities might include removing barriers to migration; improving degraded headwater habitat; having a cold, dispassionate look at the impact of seals and cormorants; or promoting angling as a means to persuade young people back on to riverbanks and away from Xbox and Snapchat.
Accepting money from the fish farm industry would be no different to what has been happening for decades with the hydropower industry. Scottish and Southern Energy, for instance, pay an annual contribution of £70,000 to the Ness District fishery, and last year paid the entire costs of constructing a £750,000 salmon hatchery on the River Conon. There is a precedent.
On the wild salmon fishery which I run, the River Lochy, with the help of Marine Harvest, EWOS Feeds and other major industry players we have been running an indigenous smolt stocking project for the last 10 years. In spite of having over a dozen fish farms in the estuary (nowhere else in Scotland compares to this), we have boosted salmon numbers from a disastrous 32 fish during one year in the worst times of poorly managed fish farms 20 years ago to an average of around 500 a year today. In addition, we provide full-time and seasonal employment for ten people, have won the prestigious Malloch Trophy (for the biggest salmon caught in Scotland) twice in the last 10 years, and prime weeks on the Lochy are once again as rare as hen’s teeth. All this has been achieved against a highly disadvantageous national backdrop of the recent collapse in the numbers of grilse (salmon which return to the river after just one year feeding at sea), for which the Lochy was once famed.
The key to it all has been the ongoing close engagement with our local fish farmers, forging relationships based on mutual trust and respect. Thanks to the financial and technological support of those fish farmers – which continues with Marine Harvest’s unilateral decision to publish the lice figures for all their farms on their website – the result has been both environmental and infra-structure improvements.
What we have not done is talk ourselves out of a recovery. This seems to be the case in so many other regions of the west where academic scientists from within the network of Fishery Trusts tend to drive management. Churchill famously said that ‘scientists should be on tap but never on top’. Nowhere is this truer than in our handling of the fish farming problem. The key to progress lies in the unbiased use of science and a generous dose of pragmatic negotiation. Compromise is an inevitable part of the solution.
Behind the scenes it is rumoured that the Atlantic Salmon Trust is working away using its highly influential patron HRH The Prince of Wales to bring key stakeholders from both sides of the problem together. Seemingly some early meetings between AST, Marine Harvest and Sainsburys have already taken place behind closed doors. The need for a collaborative approach has obviously taken root at the very highest level.
But right now river managers on the West Coast need to press the reset button on this whole issue; come away from the tabloids and back to the negotiating table with a measured pragmatism based on the realities of life. Yes, there are still some formidable issues to thrash out. But one thing is for sure – fish farming is here to stay and, contrary to popular belief, there is much it can do to save the plight of wild salmon.
‘ Salmon numbers on my river, the Lochy, fell to a disastrous 32 fish one year during the worst times’