news/editorial

23 March 2014 News/Editorial

The text from Malcolm, on Tuesday this week, said “we did see a springer today but it was being ripped to bits by a seal in the Cauld Stream”.

Someone said the same seal had caught 2 at Birgham Dub. It had enjoyed a good day; so much for catch and release.

If you had to note the things you least want to see when you go salmon fishing, the cute face of a seal popping up, just where you were thinking of casting your fly, would be top of the list.

Now I don’t buy the argument that seals are responsible for pushing the fish upstream en masse, rather as a collie does a herd of sheep, but I do think you have no chance of catching a salmon in the same pool as a seal. And you certainly don’t want to hook the seal.

There is “fudge” in a lot of things in life, and seals in salmon rivers is one of them. It is nonsense to suppose that a seal that takes up residence in a salmon pool, and refuses to move for days on end, can be tolerated.

It will happen one day here, as I recall it did on the Dee last year, and all hell will be let loose.

Because politicians and their environmental watchdogs at SNH are terrified of ever supporting anyone who wants to “control” (euphemism for “shoot”) seals, beavers or anything else that looks cuddly, regardless of the damage they will do.

And of course nobody sympathises with fish, because you can’t see them under water and they are slimy, not cuddly or remotely cute.

So, it is fine, it would seem, for seals to rip a springer to bits 15 miles up the river, even if the springer is far more endangered than the seal. Can you imagine the howls of protest from the great British public if salmon went around ripping those cute little seals to bits!

Maybe we need an inflatable Great White Shark in Berwick harbour….the real thing would be better, and with global warming, as with the ever northwards flight of the little egret (see last week), who knows?

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All of which is (mainly) a bit of fun, but it brings me, more seriously, to the Ythan (erstwhile magnificent sea trout river, north of Aberdeen) and Usan Fisheries, netters extraordinaires off the Scottish north east coast.

I am indebted to Anne Wolrige Gordon for sending me a cutting from her local Aberdeenshire rag.

There is a colony in the Ythan estuary of between 1,000 and 1,800 breeding grey seals, so many that you allow your dog to swim there at its peril, one poor Labrador emerging without a leg after a seal attack and having to be put down.

Usan Fisheries, the same prime movers in wanting to start netting for springers this year 14 weeks earlier than usual, have bought up dormant netting rights and are intending to net in/off the Ythan estuary again. They have applied for a licence to cull (another euphemism, it also means “shoot”) seals because they represent a “predation issue”.

Now, as Captain Darling would have said, “blow me down and call me an old cynic”, but what exactly do Usan Fisheries represent if not the ultimate human v salmon “predation issue”? So far as the salmon are concerned, whether they are knocked on the head after being caught in one of Usan’s nets, or torn to shreds by a seal makes very little difference.

Either way, the salmon is dead. The irony of their culling licence application is clearly lost on them; they want to shoot seals so that they can kill more salmon before the seals do? It displays a worrying lack of self awareness….or maybe they have a sense of humour?

And that is the extraordinary thing about the newspaper article, there is not one word about the real victims, not the seals and certainly not Usan, but the salmon (and in the Ythan’s case, also the sea trout).

I can forgive the seals for eating salmon so long as they stay in the sea; it is what they do.

But not Usan. They operate largely interceptory coastal nets and are seeking to expand their operations, without any regard that I (or more importantly Orri Vigfusson) can see as to the wider conservation, and international political, with the Faroes and Greenland, issues. They appear to be on a mission.

The sad truth is that the only people who are really concerned for the long term survival of the Atlantic salmon in Scotland and the UK are its salmon and sea trout anglers…..us. The public generally don’t give a toss, because they think salmon are smelly, and anyway there are plenty of them on the Tesco’s shelves; all neatly vacuum packed and ready to go, so where’s the problem?

Had the anglers, the rods, not financed a succession of massively expensive net buy outs since 1987 and poured money into their local river boards and trusts, there would be even fewer salmon today.

We put back 3 out of every 4 salmon we catch here (on Tweed) throughout the year (other rivers are very similar), and statistics show we only catch, in the late summer and autumn, at most 1 in 20 of the population.

If my maths is correct, the rods here therefore kill 1 in every 80 salmon that come into this river.

Based on those statistics, rod fishing, as practised today, is pretty much a conservation activity in its own right.

By way of the very starkest contrast, those interceptory nets kill everything they catch, and the more they kill, the more money they make….. and they don’t know, or care, which river those fish are destined for.

Let us assume that the UK population of grey and common seals is 375,000 and 50,000 respectively, and that the sizeable north east Scottish contingent are more than a little partial to a bit of salmon, as indeed, we now know, are the proprietors of Usan Fisheries.

It really is a dog eat dog world out there…………..if your draw in life is to be a salmon.