We are talking here of something near miraculous, something we should look after and treasure, should be proud of. It is a fish which emerges from the egg in February or March, in the smallest of streams, it may be. In its early life it resembles the brown trout, but in its second year or third, it changes, sheds its trout guise and makes for the ocean, all silver. Many will make the full crossing of the Atlantic and, when the call comes, and we know not how or when, it turns eastward for its own home stream. It arrives there, led, we assume in the last phase, by its sense of smell, and perhaps at the very spot where it emerged from the egg. There, mating, it starts the whole cycle again.
Those who worry about the wild salmon are neither people anxious solely to catch this king of fish, nor people who have further commercial aims. They want to see a great treasure preserved for this country. Thus, a group of public-spirited individuals, the Wild Salmon Support Group, criticise the 1997 findings of a worthy official group known as The Salmon Task Force. On the grounds, only, that it is not sufficiently strict in its rulings to allow a great enough number of fish crossing the Atlantic to reach their spawning beds. They give the figures.
Now, it is known that conditions in the Atlantic in recent years have changed. In Britain, Dr Summers of the fisheries research with the British Game Conservancy Trust says that climate change alters whole marine systems, affecting, of course, fish. Fish other than salmon have been affected. Haddock, he instances. And our Irish group notes that there has been commercial exploitation of capelin (a sort of smelt) and other fish on which salmon feed.
All the more reason, then, for stronger official action. Restrictions already imposed have not proved enough. The Wild Salmon Support Group feel it advisable to have further recourse to established measures restricting the interception of wild salmon. They mention, for example, a moratorium on drift netting of three to five years, with proper compensation; curtailment of draft netting and perhaps further restriction in permitted fishing days for all categories, including anglers.
There is much more, but in the last lines of the report it is stated that such measures are needed if the situation is not "to pass beyond hope of recovery as salmon numbers continue to dwindle."