One of the pleasures of eating in France, and perhaps especially along the Mediterranean coast, is the variety and quality of fish dishes. Some of the fish we don't have on our menus. Now things change around. A fish which is vanishing from great parts of our west coast, and which used to be a tourist attraction, to say nothing of its appeal to ourselves, is appearing in rivers which run down to the Mediterranean. A miracle which experts can so far hardly believe. (As to ourselves, we bumble along, unwilling to acknowledge our sins. We all know why this has happened to us, and are doing nothing.)
The fish is, of course, the sea trout. It used to be thought that sea trout existed only where rivers debouched into the Atlantic. It was believed that sea trout could not exist in the Mediterranean because the water was too warm and too salty. A French magazine runs an article and at the top is a photograph of a handsome, silvery fish, 4 kilos in weight and 80 centimetres in length. It was caught in June 1996 in the river Muy, over on the eastern French Mediterranean. The editor of the magazine (Le Chasseur Francais) had for a long time been getting letters reporting the catching of apparently migratory fish in the rivers entering that sea, and finally decided to make extensive enquiries. It had long been held that the capacity to migrate from river to sea and back to spawn had been lost in the river fish.
The magazine found that people of impeccable qualifications, such as a technician in the Fisheries Board, had found several such fish caught in nets, and he himself had caught one in the Rhone. Another fishery official claimed that dozens are found in the river Argens, not far from the Muy river. And a bulletin of the council mentioned, reported 10 years ago trout "in silver livery" in great numbers upstream of the hydro-electric works. It mentions, too, the trout captured in the lower Rhone but their return to the spawning beds has not been followed.
Theorists of the Mediterranean not being suitable the article states, ignored the fact that big estuaries allow the fish to accustom themselves slowly to the new conditions. And, of course, fish sold as sea trout may just be brown trout raised in cages in the sea. Also, there is a theory that some of the migratory fish may be fish bought as fry from some Atlantic-facing river or perhaps Denmark. There are more questions, but no more room here. Y
