From the Atlantic Salmon Trust

Earlier this month, AST Chief Executive Tony Andrews and Research Director Professor Ken Whelan attended the annual meeting of NASCO in Greenland. This year's meeting was held in the remote town of Ilulissat (population 4,500), 250 miles inside the Arctic Circle. Tony sent this report of their visit to Greenland.

While the slow moving wheels of an international treaty organisation, which is what NASCO is, grind on - often to the acute frustration of the NGOs attending the meeting - this year's event had a poignancy and relevance that were not lost on the participants.

The meeting was held close to the outfall of the greatest of all iceberg-generating glaciers in the very area where some of our two sea-winter salmon come to feed. The economy of Ilulissat is based on fishing, hunting and tourism. The ground is permanently frozen. There are no trees or shrubs, just tundra and the continuous passage of huge icebergs passing the town as they exit the great Jacobsvahn glacier. Beneath the ice the sea is extraordinarily fertile and our feeding salmon have a plentiful and varied menu, ranging from capelin to squid, and even on occasions a species of sea snail. Salmon netted in these waters are fat and oily and very unlike the sleek, aquadynamic and athletic fish that arrive in our rivers after their 2000 mile journey. But these fish are an important part of the diet of the Innuit people of Ilulissat, and they see them as their fish as they eat and grow fat in Greenland's inshore waters.

NASCO has an agreement with the Greenland Government that limits these First Nation fishermen to a subsistence catch, which in 2010 amounted to 45 tons of salmon.

It is reckoned that over 80% of the feeding Atlantic salmon in these waters are of North American origin, bound for the numerous rivers of Labrador, Newfoundland and Quebec, plus a few from endangered stocks in the United States. Only 20% or so are of European origin, but they are probably fish from populations that run our rivers early in the year, from stocks which are generally seen as fragile. It is not surprising, given the abundance of salmon the Greenland fishermen are now seeing, that they want to return to a commercial salmon fishery after the current agreement ends at the close of the 2011 season.

The Innuit fishermen held a protest outside the Arctic Hotel where the NASCO meeting was held.

From a conservation viewpoint, armed with the information which genetic analysis gives us, it is easy to argue that the Greenland fishermen should continue to restrict their catches to a subsistence level. But if you see how these people have to live in a treeless country with snow in June and darkness throughout the winter, and their dependence on fishing, it is hard not to sympathise with their demand to be allowed to fish commercially for their salmon (or are they ours?). In the final analysis, whether we sympathise on a human level or not, no-one has any sort of right, human or commercial, to exploit an endangered species. Unfortunately the Greenland 'distant' mixed stocks fishery is simply unsustainable when you consider the rivers of the United States where the Atlantic salmon is already designated as 'endangered', not to mention our own stocks where early running fish in most rivers are below conservation levels.