0ne of the salmon experts, Professor Chris Todd, professor of
marine ecology at St Andrews University, said it was not
just the number of salmon that was a concern but their quality.
He said that by monitoring an un-named major Scottish
river for the past 17 years, he had found that the
weight of the average grilse had fallen from 2.4kg to 1.7kg
and that its length had shortened from 59 to 54 cm.
Pretty handy having an un-named major river to play with - for 17 years in fact - and only notice now.
I'd like to see the full result not emotive spin put on selected parts of what will be valuable SALSEA project results by an ecologist hell bent on blaming 'climate change' instead of, for example: poor or inefective EU fishery management, although there
has been warming in parts of the Noth Atlantic feeding grounds.
The English Environment Agency monitor pretty much the same thing in grilse and trapped in 'key' rivers. I'll find some data but I think grilse still average 8 to 8.2 lb in west and east coast rivers (e.g. Dee at Chester and the Tyne).
4 sea winter class salmon were always rare, and 5 sea winter would be 70 or 80 lb class. Not exactly common in previous years. The west Greenland net fishery decimated this class and numbers are only just begining to improve after the buy-outs.
Prof Todd said he suspected that climate change was the cause
of the shrinking salmon. "To find salmon that have now spent three,
four and five winters at sea - the very big fish - is rare.
Shrinking salmon?
Linear Mode
