How little is known: Intrafish reports that new research from NINA and NTNU in Norway has shown that there may be more sea lice at greater depths than near the surface. They say that the picture of sea lice distribution is more complex than previously thought and may challenge the move to farm salmon in submersible pens.
Whilst NINA and NTNU think that their discovery might impact new farming technology, there is a much more important aspect to this research. This is that the scientific community have for many years argued that their interpretation of sea lice impacts is well established and this is reflected in the models they use to predict sea lice distribution in the fjords. Yet, clearly, their knowledge is not as clear cut as sea lice larvae do not always behave as the recognised narrative claims.
In fact, this story isn’t even news as SAMS in Scotland have previously reported that they too have found sea lice larvae at depth and whilst the numbers are larger than those in the surface layers, the numbers are still very small. The Norwegian team also say that the numbers could be higher at lower depths, but they have yet to determine exactly which life stages they have found.
The Norwegian researchers also say that whilst lice larvae drift with the current, they can influence their vertical position to some extent. However, it is extremely unlikely that these larvae can move18 metres and as they are thought to be phototaxic, the movement would be towards the lights not away. What is more likely is that the larvae are caught on deeper water movements and remain stuck between differ water strata.
We will need to wait to hear the exact numbers detected but the likelihood is that sea lice numbers in the water column remain very low confirming again that wild fish are at little risk.
Such knowledge is exactly why there needs to be a new discussion on sea lice and wild fish interactions, especially given the news about wild fish in the next commentary.
Bottom of the trough: Torfinn Evensen, secretary general of Norsk Lakseelver, the organisation representing river owners in Norway told Intrafish that it was hoped that the miserable year last year had marked the bottom of the trough and that this year a clear improvement would be seen. Sadly, his view shows the total lack of understanding held by the angling community as to what is happening to wild salmon, not just in Norway but across the Atlantic region.
The problem is that Norsk Lakseelver are totally invested in the views of the Scientific Committee for Salmon Management (VRL) whose latest report has just been published as an English summary. They continue to push their outdated view that salmon farming represents the greatest threat to wild salmon and sea trout. This is despite a mountain of evidence that shows salmon farming represents little risk to wild fish. What they fail to appreciate that is if all salmon farms were removed from all Norwegian fjords, wild salmon would still remain firmly on the road to local extinction.
Mr Evensen continued that unfortunately any signs of improvement have yet to appear and instead catches of wild salmon are even lower than they were last year. Mr Evensen’s naivety of wild salmon populations extended further by saying that the dramatic collapse is the consequence of an accumulated negative effect from everything from pollution, hydroelectric development and farming activity over 40-50 years. Whilst angling is not the primary reason for the collapse, the angling sector’s continued failure to acknowledge that angling has an impact. Since only as recently as 1993 anglers have caught and killed 3,350,022 wild salmon that have been prevented from breeding future generations of wild salmon. This catch was considered a sustainable harvest when clearly it was not. Of course, it is easier to blame salmon farming tan accept the reality
Intrafish gives some examples of low catches such as the Mandal river which has seen 83 salmon caught so far, which is fewer than last year, which led to the river being closed on June 23rd. In 2023 the catch was 413 salmon. The river Otra opened for fishing on June 15th and has seen just 21 fish caught compared to 41 in 2023. Finally, the Tovdalselva has produced just ten salmon compared to 54 last year and 61 in 2023.
I personally wouldn’t suggest even the 2023 catches are spectacular. You need to go back to 1999 to see the peak in fish killed. Catch and release in Norway has never really matched the decline in salmon caught and killed.
McBlob: I have been researching wild fish interactions for 15 years and whilst Marine Scotland’s scientists have continually refused to discuss the science, their colleagues in Victoria Quay used to be much more receptive. Whenever I was in Edinburgh, I often used to have a coffee and a chat with one civil servant or another. In more recent times, the exchanging views have become much more difficult. Questions, once answered by a quick phone call now must be placed as an FOI. Telephone enquiries are now met by voice mail. Certainly, things changed after COVID but according to Alex Massie in the Times, the underlying problem is that the devolved civil service has doubled in size since 1999 and this is making it more difficult for ministers to get things done.
Mr Massie highlights that in 2019, the civil service employed 17,700 people and now the number has risen to 27,400, many of whom only must attend the office on one day a week. One of the out of hours messages from one civil servant I received in response to my last mailing stated, ‘Monday 30 June is a non-working day’. According to Mr Massie, half of the civil servants are classed as managers or team leaders and nearly half lead teams of just one or two people. He says that the civil service increasingly resembles a make-work scheme for the chosen many, which is why McBlob grows ever larger but seems to do increasingly less.
I was interested in Mr Massie’s view after reading the latest minutes from the Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan Delivery Group from 28th February which were published on 3rd June..I don’t know how many members this group has but twenty-one attended this meeting with a further two giving their apologies. Of the twenty-one attendees, what struck me most was that ten were listed as working for the Marine Directorate. This makes nearly 48% of the attendees as working for the Scottish Government. The meeting took place at Faskally which begs the question as to how many civil servants can you squeeze into a mini because the cost of getting these government employees to Faskally and back must be considerable unless they all managed to fit into one car.
Of the ten, one is Deputy Director, one is head of the Science and Evidence Board, one is a policy manager and another Nature Targets Team Leader with another working in Wildlife crime. Finally, one was introduced to the meeting as the new head of wild salmon and recreational fisheries team. The rest remain a mystery. How many can actually contribute to any discussion about safeguarding wild salmon is unclear, but the minutes of meetings certainly don’t instil any confidence of wild salmon’s future. Some of the meeting was devoted to the need for a collective communication strategy to promote and highlight the work of the delivery group. This included discussion of a collective communication strategy logo.
Having read all the minutes of previous meetings and those from the science and evidence group I am not convinced that there is anything worth reporting. They are still discussing restocking despite the extensive data produced over on the River Carron. The last Science and Evidence Group meeting minutes from November 2024 discussed adding woody debris into rivers.to enhance salmon habitat. This is clearly at the cutting edge of salmon conservation.
Finally, the minutes of the delivery group included discussion of the Wild Salmon Connections meeting held in London in January. Seemingly, the declaration that was developed at this hot bed of anti-salmon farming meeting was shared.
Thanks to this delivery group, the future of wild salmon in Scotland is certainly not assured.
More lice: In the previous issue of reLAKSation I revisited the Ives paper, which had been written by Scottish government scientists and represents the last analysis of sea lice counts on wild fish that had been undertaken in the last seven years. Although the sea lice count data has been collected since 1997, this latest research focused on just the years 2013 to 2017. This was because they tried to link the sea lice on wild fish to the sea lice counts on farmed salmon and these years were the only dataset they had. After 2017 the way sea lice were counted on farms changed but why there has been no similar analysis since is unclear.
I re-examined the Ives data using the protocol and the methodology from a previous paper published in 2013 and found that just 1.2% of post smolt trout were at risk of damage from sea lice, which was very different from the conclusions drawn in the paper.
I also decided to extend the data to the full dataset running from 1997 to 2024. If I applied the same criteria of including fish of less than 198mm and fish that were caught in samples of 30 fish and over, then the total number of fish was 6621 out of 26,068 sampled over the twenty-eight years. This included fish caught in 147 samplings out of 1781 in the full dataset. These were obtained from 46 of the 114 sites. The remaining sites either did not catch any small fish (14) or failed to achieve the 30 fish minimum (54).
Following on from the Ives paper, just 9.03% of the fish were found to be at risk from sea lice at the Wells Threshold (if one accepts the Wells threshold is correct, which it isn’t). This is higher than the 1.2% risk found in the 2013-2017 data but this comes from a greater sized dataset, with a higher risk of inaccuracy. However, 9% risk is still low and far below the risk imposed by the highly flawed Sea Lice Risk Framework.
It is also worth putting the infestation in perspective. Just 21 fish were sampled each year carrying one juvenile louse and these were sampled from 46 sites. This means that each site sampled less than one half a fish with one louse. When the Wells Threshold is applied in the same way, then 1.35 fish carrying 12 lice are caught each year, split between 46 sites. Finally, the highest lice count found was 219 lice on a fish. This level of infestation was found on just one fish caught over 28 years from 46 sites. It is easy to see that claims of high lice counts can be highly overstated by the angling community.
Miracle: Congratulations to James Brown from Birmingham who according to the Ross-shire Journal, who after fishing the river Gruinard in Wester Ross for the last forty years has caught and landed a 241/2 lb salmon (approx. 11.1kg). Mr Brown played the fish for 45 minutes before recording at as the heaviest fish caught from the river since 1936.
Not only was this a record fish but because anglers say that salmon farming has decimated the wild salmon population on the west coast, it is a miracle fish.
At the same time, it will be a miracle if this large hen fish survives. The newspaper pictures the river’s head keeper with the fish laid out on the riverbank with his hand around the caudal peduncle, the area in front of its tail.
Ross-shire Journal
The minutes of the June 2024 Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan Delivery Group meeting highlights that Fisheries Management Scotland are leading work to provide refreshed guidance on the advice given about catch and release. Clearly, a year on, there is still a lot of work to do because if the river Gruinard’s head keeper fails to keep the fish in the water, then what hope is there for the average angler to follow the advice.