Lice, lice and more lice: It has been a few months since Marine Scotland Science (MSS) published the sea lice sampling data collected by the west coast fisheries trusts from 1997 to 2019. The original spreadsheet had to be subsequently revised because the way the data was laid out gave the impression that three times as many fish had been analysed as actually had.
My analysis of these 21,000 plus sampled fish has taken a great deal of my time, not just because of other commitments, but also because the data is confusing. In total, there are 100 different sampling sites listed but further analysis has shown that many of the sites are the same, just that they have been spelled differently in different years. MSS don’t seem to have made any attempt to rationalise the data. One site is not attributed to any fishery trust whilst another has been attributed to the wrong one. It has taken a great deal of effort to sort out. To give an example, 17 sites have been whittled down to just four. A further site seems to have been sampled by a different fisheries’ trust at a different time. In this commentary, I’m not even addressing the issue of sample sizes. I’ll save that for another time.
What has caught my attention now is one sampling site that was netted in 2007 and caught 13 fish and again in 2009 but this time just two fish were caught. The lice count for these 15 fish are shown in the following table:
The two lowest counts were from the fish caught in 2009, the others were caught in 2007. What is clear that there are some really high lice counts at this sampling site. Why the site was never revisited after 2009 should become clear as I explain the location. First, I would like to refer to an article in Trout & Salmon magazine written by Andrew Graham Stewart of STA/STC/WFC in an article entitled ‘Why Dr Jaffa is so wrong’.
In the article, he relates how catches of sea trout in Loch Hope remain healthy despite the presence of two salmon farms in adjacent Loch Eriboll. He says that the fish from the Hope System do not come into contact with the farms and swim straight out of the river into the open Atlantic where they survive and mature without encountering damaging sea lice. This is because the River Hope emerges into Loch Hope near its mouth and thus close to the sea The Hope fishery district, which Mr Graham Stewart describes, is on Scotland’s north coast which other than the two farms in Loch Eriboll is devoid of salmon farming.
Heading eastward away from Loch Hope, the next fishery district is Kinloch which includes the Grade 1 river Borgie. Continuing eastward, the next fishery district is the Naver fishery district including the Grade 1 river Naver. Next to the Naver is the Strathy with the Strathy river which is Grade 3, probably because of its small size and limited ability to produce juveniles. The next fishery district is the Halladale including the Grade 1 river Halladale.
The river Halladale had a catch last year of 451 salmon and 26 sea trout. Other catches from these rivers included 911 salmon and 129 sea trout from the Naver and 67 salmon and 744 sea trout from the Hope. The other significant fishery district on the north coast is the Grudie which is to the west of the salmon farms of Loch Eriboll. The river Dionard in the Grudie fishery district produced 152 salmon and 244 sea trout. Finally, to complete the picture of the north coast, the Thurso, a Grade 1 river located near the town of the same name, in the east produced 633 salmon. In 2021, these fishery districts saw 131 salmon and grilse and 32 sea trout retained by anglers. The north coast is considered to offer some of the best salmon fishing there is.
An estimate of the distance between Loch Eriboll and its salmon farms and for example, the Halladale River is about 45 km as the crow flies. The reason for mentioning the Halladale is that this is the location of the sampling site I referred to above. I have tried to check that the Halladale site is the river Halladale but am still waiting for a reply, However, there is no other location with this name so I believe that I can assume that this is the correct location.
The big question is why are there such high lice counts on fish caught from the mouth of this Grade 1 river that is located many miles from a salmon farm? The answer is probably that it is simply due to natural infestation. The likelihood is that these fish are not representative of the actual fish population, which is why so few were caught, especially the one that are free of lice.
The sea lice sampling programme focusses on the areas around salmon farms and of course, fish with lice are found. However, the programme is not extended to areas without salmon farms for comparison and so it is unclear whether the lice infestations listed in the spreadsheet are natural or due to the presence of farming. There is at least one scientific paper that has compared lice counts from Scotland’s east and west coasts. This is from 1997 and needless to say the researchers found high lice counts in the east. The researchers were from SOAEFD, a previous incarnation of Marine Scotland Science.
It is unclear why the Halladale data was included in the Marine Scotland Science dataset, but the few fish sampled there show that the narrative against salmon farming is clearly being somewhat selective.
Note: In the graph of sea lice counts from sites increasingly distant from a salmon farm which appears later in this commentary, the site of furthest distance is the Dionard, which also is shown to have high lice counts.
Where’s the catch: STV News have reported that the salmon season has been celebrated as anglers catch plenty of whoppers. Salmon weighing up to 28lb have been landed from the Cargill beat on the river Tay. It has been estimated that more than 5,500 salmon were caught from the river this year. This compares with 4,505 landed last year.
This year has been the first year without restrictions on travel and hospitality since the Covid pandemic and according to STV, anglers and guests have returned in high numbers. It could therefore be that the improvement in catches is due to increased fishing effort rather than any resurgence in salmon numbers.
Whilst STV News have been advised on catch numbers well before the end of October, we must wait until around April 2023 before the official catch statistics are published. In these times of immediate news, why the reporting of angling catches remains firmly rooted in the Dark Ages continues to be a mystery? Surely, river proprietors must be capable of reporting catches once a week, if not daily. After all, for most proprietors this is a business, and it is now time that they treat is as such. How can catches be assessed if we could be waiting over eighteen months before the official data is made available?
Regular readers may remember that I have already fought one long battle with Marine Scotland Science over the reporting of catch data. They wanted to reduce the number of reporting areas by approximately half, in order to protect the privacy of river proprietors. They argued that it is possible to calculate the proprietors’ earnings from the number of salmon caught and thus data needed to be consolidated into fewer reporting areas. I argued in response, that if fishery districts were being merged into fewer reporting areas, how could the status of salmon be assessed. Fortunately, the Information Commissioner agreed with me so Marine Scotland Science were forced to revert to reporting catches from all 109 fishery districts.
Whilst catches from 109 fishery districts is preferred to fifty or so larger reporting areas, it would be much more useful to obtain catches from individual rivers rather than the wider fishery districts. It has always been made clear to me that such information is not available due to the protection of the private interests of the river proprietors, so I have never sought to obtain such detailed catch data.
Since 2016, the Scottish Government has been assessing the conservation status of initially just the fishery districts but now of another seventy river systems. Some fishery districts have been broken down into separate areas of assessment, which generally means separate rivers. As part of the conservation assessment, it is first important to know how many fish have been caught as this provides an estimate of the total stocks. As part of this process, MSS publish details of how the final grade has been calculated. This includes publication of the catch data for the most recent five years. One example of this is the River Ba from the Baa fishery district on the Isle of Mull.
The river Ba is a grade one river, whilst the three other rivers in the Baa fishery district, are all Grade 3. Even though the river is in the heart of the salmon farming area, the black bars clearly show that salmon are being caught and killed for sport. More importantly they are being caught and killed relatively near one of the highest risk protection areas established by SEPA for the risk- assessed framework. How can such fish be considered at risk yet killed for sport?
However, the relevant aspect of these graphs is that Marine Scotland Science has published the catch data from specific rivers. In doing so they have established a precedent because they clearly have not considered the private interests of river proprietors. If they can publish catch data for the river Ba (and many other rivers too) for the last five years, then surely, older data should be published too, especially as it has less relevance to current proprietor incomes.
In my opinion, the time has come to publish catch data for every river in Scotland. If wild salmon are in so much trouble, we need to see this reflected in catches. In the large rivers, I would like to see beat data published, but I recognise that this is a hope too far.
I have initiated a discussion about river catch data with Marine Scotland Science and should there be no accommodation of my request, I will revert the matter back to the Information Commissioner. After all, data cannot be published on the Scottish Government website for them to then claim it is private.
If the wild fish sector is so passionate about saving wild salmon, they will readily endorse this request for more detailed data to be published so we can really see what is happening to salmon in Scotland’s rivers.
Risk framework: The debate over the Risk Assessment Framework continues, especially in relation to the use of sentinel cages. The level of risk has been assessed from Norwegian sentinel cage data but in ensuing discussions, I was sent a MSS paper which measured sea lice levels in sentinel cages placed in Loch Torridon.
The paper includes the following visual:
The first aspect of this illustration that caught my attention was that the main current flow is in the direction of the head of Loch Shieldaig and the River Shieldaig. I cannot see where the flow then goes. It might head up the other side of the loch but then will hit the flow across the loch and effectively be directed in never ending circles. It appears that there is a paper about the flows in this loch system which suggest that the above view of current flow is extremely simplistic.
The second point relates to the location to the farms and the three sentinel cages. A paper by Middlemas and others from MSS, although clouded by the language used, suggests that wild fish sampled near to salmon farms will have a higher lice burden and this tails away with increasing distance from the farm. The fish in cage 1 would therefore be expected to have higher lice levels, followed by cage 2 and then cage 3. In fact, this work shows the opposite to be true with cage 3 showing the highest (two) lice levels. This does not make sense. These two papers, from MSS, appear to contradict each other.
I would mention that whilst I didn’t have access to the data used by Middlemas, I did have data for the years 2011 to 2015 from the same source. I placed the lice levels recorded in order of distance from the farm ranging from 2 km to over 50km. I have had great difficulty in seeing any pattern in the results as illustrated:
The explanation for this observation is simple. Cage 3 was infested by the background level of lice found round the river mouth as might be expected with natural infestations. The length of time these cages were in operation was just one week, confirming that fish migrating even through the longest lochs will be exposed to very small infestation pressures.
Clearly the reason why SEPA have used Norwegian data to assess risk is because the research by MSS does not stand up to scrutiny. Could this be why there is such a reluctance by SEPA and MSS to discuss the science relating to the framework.
Mortality: Salmon Farm industry critics have always stated that if the mortality rates of salmon (coldblooded animals) were repeated in traditional agriculture such as with pigs and chickens, then there would be a massive public outcry.
This month, several articles have appeared concerning animal mortality within traditional agriculture. The Guardian reported that scientists are rushing to create a vaccine to hit the world’s biggest disease outbreak. Since 2018, over 100 million pigs have succumbed to African Swine Fever, including in parts of Europe. Yet this is a disease that has failed to arouse the public’s awareness.
This week, the Times headlined the devastating pandemic that’s flown under the radar. This is bird flu. Already some 3.5 million chickens, ducks and turkeys have been destroyed in the UK with 48 million across Europe. This is not forgetting the millions of wild birds that have succumbed and hardly a murmur from the public.
Also in the Times, columnist and TV personality Jeremy Clarkson has written that our beautiful birds are falling from the skies and ‘nobody seems to care’. He points out that the problem is most acute in Scotland where thousands upon thousands of terns, gannets and guillemots have died. And yet, there is no public outcry that the salmon farm critics suggest there would be.
These ill-informed individuals appear to suggest that salmon farmers don’t care and just accept the mortality as long as they are making money. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sadly, as I have pointed out many times, these so-called social media experts try to find anyway to criticise salmon farming, but when offered the opportunity to talk face to face and substantiate their claims, they run a mile.
It is only in recent years that mortality has become an issue, this is because the angling fraternity, having failed to persuade consumers to stop eating farmed salmon, opted to highlight mortality in the hope of raising concerns from the public that way. It is interesting that Wild Fish Conservation have resorted to trying to deter consumers from eating farmed salmon again, because their campaign to highlight mortalities has failed too.
This week, critic Donald Staniford continued to highlight mortality by pointing out that SEPA have failed to update the Scotland Aquaculture website since December 2021. The salmon farm industry also publishes mortalities, so he is not without a source of data. What interests me more is that SEPA have been appointed to administer the risk assessment framework. How is this going to work out for the industry if they can’t even publish mortality data on a monthly basis?
Beyond disgust: It must be extremely difficult living in Alexandra Morton’s world where everything seems to be black or white. She has equated the decline of wild salmon numbers with the presence of salmon farms. No matter that salmon stocks in areas where there are no salmon farms are also in decline. No matter that other factors can be correlated with the declines. It is salmon farms that are responsible, even though data about sea lice collected by her own research station tells a very different story. In her world, there is no point discussing the issues with anyone else because it is clear salmon farms are to blame. A former Fisheries Minister appears to have bought into Alexandra Morton’s world, which made her extremely happy.
Now the current fisheries minister has been out to see for herself what is going on and taken the opportunity to talk to industry people especially those from the first Nations. She has decided that the Government need to work with the industry to explore the transition that Alexandra Morton demands.
In response, Alexandra Morton has written that she is beyond disgusted. She says that the Federal Liberals have decided to betray the BC Coast and have bowed to the wishes of Norwegian based salmon farm companies. She adds that the Minister has now turned and is going to work with the industry to make sure that salmon farms remain on the coast. Ms Morton claims that this will ensure that pathogens will continue to be poured over precious wild salmon.
In the real world, it makes sense that everyone starts talking and working out the best way to safeguard wild fish, not to follow the advice of someone who refuses to talk to anyone except those who she believes are less knowledgeable than her.
Sadly, Ms Morton’s approach is repeated across all the areas that salmon farming operates. In the UK, the wild fish interests remain firmly out of sight, refusing to talk to anyone who has a different view to theirs. Perhaps the time has come to learn something from the latest developments in Canada. Hopefully, if the Canadian Fisheries Minister is willing to have open and frank discussions, she will begin to realise that salmon farming is just a convenient scapegoat, and that the removal of salmon farms is not the solution to saving wild salmon.