Newsletter: Working Together with a Holistic Approach

The beginning of 2022 has seen a flurry of activity within the Missing Salmon Alliance as our member organisations have been continuing to work hard together to drive action and save our wild Atlantic salmon from extinction.

Today, 3rd March, marks World Wildlife Day, and this year the theme is 'Recovering Key Species for Ecosystem Restoration'. This falls directly in line with the Missing Salmon Alliance's objectives.

Here, we wanted to update you on just some examples of the initiatives that the Missing Salmon Alliance and its members have been focussing on and will continue to work on in order to achieve their goal of helping wild Atlantic salmon survive and thrive in our rivers and seas.

The Likely Suspects Framework

In the past 40 years, wild salmon populations have declined significantly. Given the abundance of farmed salmon available on supermarket shelves it may not even be apparent to the general public that wild salmon are struggling.

The Likely Suspects Framework aims to decipher the reasons why Atlantic salmon are no longer thriving in the way that they should by using a more holistic approach than previous research offers.

The Alliance's vision for the Likely Suspects Framework is to develop a new approach to identify where changes in salmon survival are occurring across their entire life-cycle, provide a forward look for stock prospects, and a framework which can guide salmon management decisions and actions.

The Missing Salmon Alliance Welcomes Scotland's Wild Salmon Strategy

The MSA welcomed the Scottish Government’s Wild Salmon Strategy, which was published on Friday 14th January 2022.

The strategy, framed around a high-level vision and objectives, aims to guide collective actions that will benefit wild fish populations for many years to come. With wild Atlantic salmon numbers in dramatic decline, action cannot come soon enough.

We welcome all aspects of this strategy and, as a collaborative body working together to safeguard the future of wild Atlantic salmon, we urge the Scottish Government to take these important steps to protect this species.

Salmonid Migration Round the Channel Project (SAMARCH)

Celine Artero, GWCT researcher working on the SAMARCH project, downloading data from an acoustic receivers.

SAMARCH is a seven-year project (2017-2023) led by Missing Salmon Alliance member The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) and part funded by the EU's Interreg VA Channel programme, that will deliver practical tools for managing and protecting salmon and sea trout in coastal waters. The cross-border project has 10 partners, five in England and five in France, who are a blend of research, NGO's, and regulatory organisations.

The Channel between England and France forms part of the migration route for juvenile and adult salmon from all salmon rivers in the area. It is a key feeding habitat for sea trout from the rivers in the region and potentially further afield. Here these migratory individuals feed and grow, increasing their reproductive potential much faster than their river resident counterparts, before returning to their native rivers to breed. However, each day hundreds of kilometres of gill nets are set which, if set in the wrong place or at the wrong time of year, risk catching and killing salmon and sea trout. To better protect these fish, the SAMARCH project has gathered information on how and when salmonids use the Channel and its estuaries.

Keep an eye on our News Pages for an update on the project.

Moray Firth and West Coast Tracking Project

2021 West Coast TP Marine Receiver Deployment (Bill Whyte of the AST)

The Atlantic Salmon Trust (AST) launched the Moray Firth Tracking Project in 2019, in response to the drastic decline in wild Atlantic salmon, in order to better understand what was happening to our young smolts on their epic journey to sea. The findings, from Year one, showed us that 50% of smolts went missing in action and did not make it out to sea. In Year two (2021), the AST looked into why they are going missing and repeatability was one of the key objectives to ensure that the initial findings were not an anomaly. Through this, the Trust is beginning to identify trends in migration and pathways. Preliminary findings are suggesting that there is a human-made problem (specifically in canal locks and dams) that could be increasing the level of predation.

For the third and final year, guided by the information and findings obtained so far, the Trust will be focusing on identifying where there are human-made pressures, and assess if this is likely to increase predation by birds or other fish with a view of generating management advice, which can be targeted on multiple levels, to ensure the appropriate action is taken to increase the number of adult salmon returning to their native rivers.

On the West Coast of Scotland, the AST has been working in partnership with Fisheries Management Scotland and Marine Scotland to carry out a similar tracking project with a view to advancing our understanding of the marine migratory distribution of salmon smolts along the West Coast. Through this project we are beginning to shed light on how our young fish navigate through this complex environment. Initial findings have clearly demonstrated our ability to accurately track these smolts as they distribute widely through the waters. Combined with undertaking repeatability studies for Year two, the key aims of this tracking season are to analyse our smolts’ speed of travel through sea lochs and to identify how they migrate through coastal zones with marine developments, such as aquaculture and offshore renewables.

The Trust will be reporting what we have learned from 2021's studies in the coming weeks. Do keep an eye on their website and social media channels for all the latest news and updates.

Preparing for the Fisheries Management Annual Conference (31 March)

Aerial view of the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory at Faskally, Pitlochry (FMS)

The Fisheries Management Scotland Conference is an annual keynote event and an opportunity for the fisheries management community to come together and discuss topical issues. It allows FMS to raise awareness of the local, regional and national projects delivered by their members and other partners and stimulate conversation and debate about our previous wild Atlantic salmon and native freshwater fish.

Contributors to the conference bring a wealth of experience on fish, fisheries and wider aquatic biodiversity. The event allows FMS to share experience not only within Scotland but beyond that to UK and international level. The 2022 Conference Our Wild Rivers will be held online on Thursday 31 March and will feature the following themes:

How we can support and restore our wild salmon and their habitat, through strategic action, practical work and finance
How we can improve the health of our rivers and fish, including a look at other freshwater species and wider connected ecology
A screening of our new film Our Wild Salmon, which highlights the pressures faced by wild atlantic salmon and the collective action underway to help reverse the current crisis

Follow here.

Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Hannah Rudd MSc, Policy & Advocacy Manager, Angling Trust

The 11th February 2022 saw the 7th UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

We proudly honoured this by speaking to some key female conservationists voices whose valuable work has aided The Missing Salmon Alliance initiatives: Hannah Rudd, Emily Smith, and Emily Hardisty.

Their insightful responses to our questions play a vital role in further achieving gender equality, and in empowering women and girls into STEM careers.

The day was also celebrated by one of our partners, Fisheries Management Scotland who profiled a number of women who work in Scotland’s fishery management and science network.

Read the full Interview piece here.

Keep up to date with our work by following us on social media

As an Alliance of five organisations, we will build on the existing work of our partners and maximise our impact by taking a coordinated approach and vital action in order to halt and reverse the decline of wild Atlantic salmon.

The goal of the Missing Salmon Alliance is to build an evidence-base to influence national and international decision-makers to regulate activities that adversely impact wild Atlantic salmon.

The Missing Salmon Alliance

The MSA is comprised of the following members:

Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Angling Trust with Fish Legal, The Rivers Trust and Fisheries Management Scotland.

https://www.missingsalmonalliance.org

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