Look to Iceland for salmon answers

SIR – A plea to Sarah Bayley Slater, the executive director of the Atlantic Salmon Trust, who is aiming on behalf of the trust to spend £1million to track down the “missing” salmon in the Atlantic. (Press and Journal, April 4).

She should visit Iceland, and discover why the total catch of returning salmon has doubled and overtaken that in Scottish rivers. The solution is not to be found in the Atlantic where for many years 95% of smolts – juvenile salmon – leaving the rivers fail to return, but in the rivers, from hatch to smolt, taking three years. Less than 1% of these juvenile salmon survive to smolt.

The reason for this damage? Climate change resulting in severe storms washing out the redds (the river bed breeding gravel), and the increased number of river protected predators – divers, otters etc, even seals swimming up rivers from the sea.

The Scottish salmon river catch has reduced from 120,000 per annum to 60,000. The Iceland catch, with a third of the fishing season and a third of the salmon rods on fewer rivers, has doubled to more than 60,000 per annum.

Will VisitScotland please note the full tourist flights from Scotland to Iceland? At an estimated value to the tourist economy of £1,000 per salmon caught on rod and line, can we wait several years for the scientific analysis being carried out in the Atlantic on behalf of the Atlantic Salmon Trust?