The Times reported (3 April 2018):
Read more via:
"Conservationists launch biggest study of its kind to find out why Scotland's wild salmon have declined so much" (The Herald, 3 April 2018)
"Why we must leap to the defence of wild Atlantic salmon" (The Herald, 3 April 2018)
Read more about the 'Missing Salmon Project' via:
From: "Davidson, Jodie (GLA-WSW)" <[email protected]>
Date: 30 March 2018 at 14:35:01 BST
To: Undisclosed recipients: ;
Subject: PRESS RELEASE: Europe's largest salmon tracking study aims to halt species' decline
MEDIA INVITATION – JOURNALISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE INVITED TO A LAUNCH EVENT ON THE RIVER GARRY – TUESDAY 3RD APRIL. MEETING POINT INVERGARRY HOTEL AT 10.30AM
PICTURES TO FOLLOW ON TUESDAY 3RD APRIL
EMBARGOED PRESS RELEASE: STRICTLY NOT FOR PUBLICATION OR BROADCAST UNTIL 10.30am ON TUESDAY 3 APRIL 2018
EUROPE’S LARGEST SALMON TRACKING STUDY AIMS TO HALT SPECIES’ DECLINE
--- The Missing Salmon Project announced to track salmon in the Moray Firth ---
--- Crowdfunding campaign to raise £1million to find cause of species’ decline ---
An international scale project which aims to track scores of wild Atlantic salmon over the next two years was launched in the Highlands of Scotland today as part of the largest effort in Europe to-date to halt the decline of the species.
Anglers gathered at the River Garry to herald the beginning of the Missing Salmon Project, which hopes to discover why this iconic fish is in such sharp decline, essential if effective measures are to be found to reverse their fortunes.
The organisation behind the project, the Atlantic Salmon Trust (AST), announced it is aiming to raise £1million via crowdfunding to support the tracking project. The marine survival of the wild salmon population has declined by 70% in just 25 years.
Executive director of the AST, Sarah Bayley Slater, said: “Salmon have been around for more than 60million years, but their future looks very bleak indeed. If the decline we’ve seen across the Atlantic and in Scotland continues, the wild Atlantic salmon could be an endangered species in our lifetime.
“In launching the Missing Salmon Project, we are making our stand now and giving our generation a chance to save the species before it’s too late.”
The Missing Salmon Project will supplement the work the AST is carrying out with international partners in preparing a Suspects Framework, which identifies and aims to quantify the causes for salmon mortality on their journey from river to sea and back again.
Working with partners across the Moray Firth, scientists are to tag scores of fish in order to determine which of these suspects are likely responsible, with The Missing Salmon Project looking to raise £1million to pay for the tags and the acoustic receivers that track the salmon’s journey.
Dr Matthew Newton is the tracking co-ordinator for the AST.
“If we’re going to have a meaningful impact on reversing the Atlantic salmon’s decline, we need to tag and track fish on a scale never seen before in Europe,” he said.
“By tagging the fish and tracking their progress from their spawning ground and back again, we’ll be able to pinpoint where fish are being lost – and help identify the causes for their increasingly worrying mortality rates.”
And with global populations of wild Atlantic salmon declining from 8-10million in the 1970s to 3-4million fish today, the project will have an international impact.
“Too many times, humanity has acted too late when a species is in decline. We have an opportunity to act now and make a lasting, positive impact so we’d ask everyone with an interest in preserving not only Scotland’s wild identity, but one of the world’s most famous species’ futures, to support this ground-breaking project,” added Dr Newton.
The Missing Salmon Project will tag juvenile fish, known as smolts, as they begin their journey from their home river towards the sea. Fish are recorded as they pass through strategic points – which will help determine how many fish make it to the ocean and where mortality occurs. The tracking project will start in the Moray Firth where 20% of all salmon that leave the UK originate and the lessons learned will be transferable to other populations of salmon around the UK.
To find out more about the Missing Salmon Project, and to donate to the cause, visit www.crowdfunder.co.uk/themissingsalmonproject
Ends 30 March 2018
Issued by Weber Shandwick on behalf of the Atlantic Salmon Trust
For more information please contact:
Steven Flanagan: 0141 343 3251/ 07557 210989
Jodie Davidson: 0141 343 3258
Jennifer Butler: 0141 343 3256
NOTES TO EDITORS
About the Atlantic Salmon Trust
The role of the Atlantic Salmon Trust is to demonstrate how salmon and sea trout can be conserved and managed to enable their value to society to be realised sustainably.
The Trust’s work concentrates on improving our knowledge of these fish, their habitats and their complex and fascinating life histories, as well as the threats to their survival. Until relatively recently this knowledge was confined mainly to the freshwater aspects of their life cycle, but the AST is now focusing on the migration and marine phase of their life.
Here's the reaction from Don Staniford, Director of Scottish Salmon Watch:
"WTF - why the hell are they focussing on the Moray Firth/East coast when all the salmon farms and lice/disease problems are on the West coast?!!! Has the project been designed by Marine Harvest?
The Missing Salmon Project is clearly looking in the wrong place - it's seems as if the Atlantic Salmon Trust have hired Inspector Clouseau to track down the culprit in the Mystery of the Missing Salmon. What a complete waste of £1 million!
How can the Missing Salmon Project "pinpoint where fish are being lost" and prepare a "Suspects Framework" when their chief suspect - lice-infested salmon farming - is located on the West not East coast? There are no salmon farms on the East coast!"
It seems the Atlantic Salmon Trust cannot read - for example the Salmon & Trout Conservation Scotland reported in August 2017:
"In an attempt to quantify the effect of salmon farming, a comparison can be made between salmon catches on the East coast of Scotland and the west coast between the Mull of Kintyre and Ardnamurchan Point (South-West Highlands). Between 1970 and 2014 rod catches of salmon on the East coast increased by almost 40%. Over the same time period rod catches in the South-West Highlands declined by 50%. Juvenile salmon migrating from rivers in the South-West Highlands must run the gauntlet close to lice-producing salmon farms not only in the immediate area but also the whole way up the west coast before they reach open ocean, free of aquaculture. Throughout this coastal migration they are vulnerable to infestation by deadly sea lice. It stands to reason that, the more salmon farms that outgoing juvenile salmon have to negotiate past on their migration to the North Atlantic feeding grounds, the less likely they are to survive."
Read more via "Comparison of the decline of Scottish East and West Coast Salmon Fisheries" (RAFTS, 2011)
I really do hope Jeremy Paxman is invited to the media launch on Tuesday - as Paxman wrote in the Financial Times in August 2017:
"This year those numbers are the lowest recorded. A similar disaster has hit other west-coast rivers, while those on the east coast have been unaffected. (The salmon farms are all on Scotland’s west coast.) Conservationists are confident of the cause of the decline: young salmon beginning their oceanic migration must pass dozens of cages at sea where captive fish are bred for the table. Wild salmon do not return to rivers like the Awe because they were killed at the start of their migration to sea."
Via: https://www.ft.com/content/8b73e21a-7cf8-11e7-ab01-a13271d1ee9c
Prince Charles, the patron of the Atlantic Salmon Trust, would be there at the launch but I think he's busy having lunch with Marine Harvest at one of their lice-infested salmon farms on the West coast of Scotland.
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