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11/28/2021

Corin Smith - interview with the man who is being spied upon by 'Scottish' salmon!

 



 

Trout & Salmon featured an interview with Corin Smith of Inside Scottish Salmon Feedlots in August 2020:

 

Corin Smith in Trout & Salmon Aug 2020 #1

 

 

 

Corin Smith in Trout & Salmon Aug 2020 #2

 

 

Corin Smith in Trout & Salmon Aug 2020 #3

 

 

Corin Smith in Trout & Salmon Aug 2020 #4

 

 

 

Here's the text of the Trout & Salmon article published in August 2020:

 

WINNING OVER THE PUBLIC

Jim Coates talks to Corin Smith, a man dedicated to halting the devastating environmental impacts of the salmon farming industry

  • Trout & Salmon (UK)
  • 1 Aug 2020
  •  

CORIN SMITH GREW UP ON A HILL sheep farm in Perthshire and from an early age he loved the outdoors and nature. Working life proper began in London where Corin joined a start-up called Betfair. Somewhat unwittingly he found himself in the midst of the dotcom boom. By 24 he’d earned himself a seat at the top table of a rapidly growing international business. An affinity for analytics and strategy proved to be a perfect match for the boom in online betting. Corin attended London Business School and after leaving Betfair consulted for a number of major organisations.

Today, Corin is dedicated to driving change in the damaging salmon farming industry. Above all, he’s a man with strong personal views about what needs to be done and a hunger for tangible results. Corin’s efforts have helped to attract the attention of the BBC Panorama programme and a host of national newspapers, dragging salmon farming into the public spotlight.

We first met on the River Tay and I remember being struck by the depth and intensity of his views about the collective effort to protect and enhance wild salmon and sea-trout stocks.

He’s anything but bland.

“Well intentioned but naïve just isn’t working, we have to professionalise and we have to go beyond the limits of our own audience”

JIM You’ve previously argued that we need to rethink what salmon conservation can and should encompass.

CORIN Conservation and conserving salmon fishing are different things. Truly wild salmon are the product of large-scale healthy ecosystems. Conservation of wild salmon has to mean big picture conservation. In today’s world, it’s also a political issue, not only a matter of science. Conserving salmon fishing could, in theory, be achieved through intensive artificial stocking and the elimination of other species that diminish those stocks. But then, how could we claim to be conservationists?

JIM You’re saying that we need to be more tuned into political positioning and public sentiment?

CORIN I think so. For decades, the management of wild salmon numbers in Scotland has been led by scientists. That’s been a failure of strategy, leading to the terminal decline of wild salmon stocks.

Scientists failed to recognise that wild salmon relied on the recreational salmon fishing industry delivering an argument for their abundance. That argument needs to include broad socio-economic benefits. Instead, what we’ve got are papers documenting their downfall.

JIM You’re very focused on salmon farms. To what extent do you think we are capable of “playing the game” and getting the wider public to demand change?

CORIN The case against salmon farms should be commercial and legal, with some supporting science. An organisation that wants to make progress will need to reflect that. It’s extraordinarily naive to think that presenting unfiltered science on its own to politicians and the public will yield results. Narratives need to be carefully managed.

JIM You think we should focus on salmon farms first, don’t you? But some might argue that’s a west coast issue, and not their fight?

CORIN For now, open-cage salmon farming in Scotland is the only game in town as far as the conservation of wild salmon in Scotland is concerned. Even for those rivers that may be affected by other issues.

“If we can’t deliver a meaningful win on salmon farming, you can forget about anything else”

JIM

It’s far from the only issue, though.

CORIN It’s the pivotal one. There’s an overwhelming body of evidence pointing to the damage being caused by salmon farms — two parliamentary inquiries have concluded the same. A number of prime-time television exposés and endless negative press are moving broader public opposition to open-cage salmon farming. No other campaign against an impact on wild salmon has anything like that level of support. If we can’t deliver a meaningful win on salmon farming, you can forget about anything else.

JIM

So we need to pick a big but winnable fight?

CORIN When we campaign successfully on something like salmon farming, demonstrate the ability to construct effective strategy, build a mandate, navigate political processes and ruthlessly deliver on policy, then we earn the respect, and fear, of politicians and industries that we will need to challenge in the future.

JIM You make an interesting point about fear and credibility. Is being more politically astute a big part of the change that you want to see?

people or effort, it’s about outcomes. Demonstrably, it’s the case that fishery management is failing. Salmon numbers have declined hugely and many of the organisations are nearly out of money.

JIM Within what you’ve said, some may agree that anyone leading an organisation should be continually identifying challenges and adapting their organisation to meet them effectively.

CORIN Yes, effectively — not just managing decline. I keep coming back to the necessity for wild salmon conservation to find its voice in a much broader public appetite for conservation and wider benefit. Some have done good work in this area, many haven’t.

JIM In terms of fitting into a broader public interest conservation scene, piscivorous birds are a thorny subject. Clearly, the birds are eating fish — I watch them on my local river most days. It’s frustrating when I extrapolate what I’m looking at.

CORIN People are desperate, angry — I get that. But great care needs to be taken about the way we approach this. Every time I listen to someone in salmon-fishing talking about shooting birds or seals and complaining about dolphins, I hear the industry hammering nails into its own coffin.

JIM It would be easier to think about the war and not the battle. If we had some wins, some sense of progress. I think in part that’s where the anger comes from.

CORIN The spirits of Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein could produce a report that says predators are responsible for wild salmon decline, but shooting them isn’t going to fly with the public. It’s not a core message of a winning conservation strategy.

JIM There are a lot of sensible people among us who just want to see some balance, the ability to exercise modest pest control.

CORIN It’s going to take care and expertise. Where there are invasive species — which could be defined as those arriving from marine habitats into rivers — that may be predating excessively on a native species such as juvenile wild salmon, then there’s a conversation to be had. But it would be better broadened out — for example, by explaining that the “invasive” is taking prey from otters, kingfishers and ospreys, too. It’s all about positioning. Public opinion may live with that version.

JIM Yes, a neat job was done in positioning grey squirrels versus red squirrels. Recently, you’ve been involved with the American brand Patagonia, working on its Artifishal campaign. What did you learn from the way the branding, PR and marketing professionals approached the challenge?

“The conservation of wild salmon in today’s world should be commercially led”

CORIN They’re professional, well-funded, organised and well led.

JIM We have various organisations at loggerheads with each other. Patagonia does well to engage

customers with a small number of causes, it builds lots of small wins. Each win creates buzz, optimism and energy. That momentum pulls in more support. To me that also carries a fear factor. It raises a question about the required mix of professional skills on the wild fisheries side as well.

CORIN As I said before, science has a role to play in fisheries management, but at the moment the mix is wrong. The conservation of wild salmon in today’s world should be commercially led, in possession of some legal armoury and founded on solid scientific observations. We’ve not got the skills mix right.

JIM Patagonia certainly has a very professional approach to branding and business strategy. Competitors would love to discredit a big worthy brand; they have to be considered. The age of business only needing to make a profit and not break, or get caught breaking, the law is closing. We’ve seen investment giants such as Blackrock making it clear it expects firms to make a positive societal contribution if they want to be in specific

Blackrock funds. It doesn’t get much more hardnosed than Blackrock — a few years ago we might have joked about that being a sign of an approaching apocalypse. It’s a gamechanger when it comes to issues like sustainability and the environment. Public opinion drives legislation and it’s becoming less acceptable to break or get close to the line in many industries.

CORIN We absolutely need to tune into that reality. Big firms can’t expect to act as badly as a number of salmon farms do and not see public opinion move against them and maybe their investors. That’s why I’m so focused on calling them out. I took a radical campaign to Patagonia and its million or so followers. It centred around restoring wild salmon populations through eradicating the impacts of salmon farming. Of course, this benefits fishermen, but crucially it delivers benefits far beyond that. Ending the pollution, welfare issues and unsustainable use of resources associated with salmon farming delivers broad public benefits, way beyond the limitations of fishing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read more via:

Herald/Ferret: "Scottish Salmon Company chief hired investigator to 'snoop' on fish farming critic"

 

Ferret on corporate snooping 27 Nov 2021 #1

 

 

 

 

Posted at 10:46 AM |

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