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Greetings!
We have been getting
a little bit excited about £1.2m coming our way via Southern Water for
Operation White Hart, a three year programme to investigate the reasons
for the precipitous decline in the chalkstream salmon population and,
hopefully, implement some measures to reverse the decline on the rivers
Itchen and Test. The who, what, how and where the money will be spent
is still unclear as it is early days so watch this space. However,
these are simply crumbs from the table compared to the hundreds of millions
being spent on fish ‘protection’ measures at Hinkley Point C, the
nuclear plant being constructed on the shore of the Bristol Channel in
Somerset.
Hinkley has long had a perceived
fish problem. As you will well know, nuclear generation requires huge
amounts on water for cooling, which arrives by way of giant intake
pipes from the sea. The Hinkley intakes estimated to shred 46 tonnes of
fish a year once in operation. Now, as I wrote about back in April
2024, 46 tonnes might seem like a lot of fish, but it really is not.
The Margiris, a super trawler that operates in the English Channel, is
capable of catching 250 tonnes of fish a DAY.
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Hinkley Point C intake pipe
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However, despite this blindingly
obvious fact, as the Daily Telegraph reported in the week, the
total spent on fish protection measures at Hinkley C now tops £750
million including special intake mouths (£500m), fish recovery and
return system (£150m), saltmarsh offset (£50m) and an acoustic fish
deterrent system (£50m). In terms of protecting the lives of endangered
fish, that spend represents 0.028 sea trout saved each year, and 0.083
salmon and six lampreys. Or in the case of the shad, £280,000 per fish
life saved.
How have we come to this
financial and ecological madness? Well, The Telegraph article
comes in the wake of a government report into the regulatory costs of
such projects as Hinkley that have become a happy hunting ground for
over zealous bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England
who throw their weight around, aided and abetted by pressure groups
such as the RSPB, Rivers Trusts and Friends of the Earth who weigh
in with their own agendas. The result, as I will attest in my dealings
with some of the above, is an emphasis on process rather than outcome.
The cost in time and money of the former is disregarded whilst outcomes
become nebulous predictions, the fallout dealt with by others long
after the regulatory decision makers have moved onto their next rodeo.
How much better off would we be
if those hundreds of millions were being spent on solving our current
problems; compared to Hinkley, the Operation White Hart spend is no
more than an accounting error. Instead of making house builders and
homeowners spend billions on bureaucratic bat, newt and tree surveys
how about a levy that actually diverts the money away from the pockets
of consultants into real world solutions? I know these so called
‘nature funds’ are far from perfect, but it is hard to see how they could
be worse than what we have now.
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Anglers: watch your backs
News has come that
the Testwood salmon fishery is no more, as least for the foreseeable
future, as the owners have taken the lease back in hand, ending
centuries of recreational salmon fishing on this famous River Test pool
close to Southampton Water.
The move has been reported as a
conservation measure in the light of the falling numbers of chalkstream
salmon which for me is an interesting take on the decline in the
migratory fish population not just here in Hampshire, but across the UK
in general. Of all the problems that assail our anadromous fish who is
it that thinks that rod and line catches have been responsible for the
parlous state we find ourselves in? After all, chalkstream salmon are
not without their protections: the close season is effectively policed
and catch-and-release has been a legal obligation for some years.
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The River Test becomes
Southampton Water
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Herein lies a danger for all of
us who love fishing. News alert: not everyone who supports river
conversation have the best interests of angling at heart. In fact, some
see conservation as the Trojan Horse to end recreational fishing.
Despite the fact that anglers were banging on about river pollution and
the associated woes decades ago, long before the ‘conservationists’
took ownership of the issue, we are now often the villains of the
piece. We leave litter. We discard fish lines. We disturb nesting birds.
We catch fish. We manage rivers for fishing not fish. And so on. And so
on.
Believe me, we need to sup with
the longest of spoons. Already conservation funding is coming with
strings attached such as the end of stocking. Soon wild trout zones,
where fishing is banned or restricted to the point of extinction, will
become normalised. But this is bunkum. Anglers are being shot because
we were once the messengers. Fishing is not the problem; pollution is
the problem. If you want your children to still fish, we will need to
fight our corner and sometimes turn our back on the siren calls of
those who really do not like us very much. And believe you me there are
plenty of those people who work in River Trusts, Wildlife Trusts,
Natural England and the Environment Agency.
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River Frome salmon news
Not sure why this is
becoming a salmon week in this Newsletter, but I guess it is all due to
a confluence of news, sadly mostly bad this time from the River Frome
in Dorset.
You might not be aware of it, but
the Frome is one of the most monitored salmon rivers in Europe, the
research run by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT)
dating back over 40 years to 1973. This impressive body of data charts
the decline of what was once a prolific Atlantic salmon river, with
catches running into the thousands each year but now mostly the matter
of a few hundred. Part of the programme is annual PIT tagging, first
introduced in 2002, that catches, weighs, measures and microchips 10,000
juvenile salmon that have hatched during winter and spring. The PIT
tags then generate movement data so that the team know when the salmon
leave the river for the ocean and, hopefully, return some years later.
However, this year there were so few juvenile salmon in the river that
the research team where only able to tag 3,226 fish, even worse than
the previous record low of 4,593 recorded last year.
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A fine River Frome salmon from
Ilsington
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As I have written before, there
is a great deal we do not know about the decline in the Atlantic salmon
population, much of which happens way out in the ocean, in
international waters beyond the scope of any national body. So, as
Donald Rumsfeld once intimated, it is all about the known unknowns and
to my mind Dylan Roberts, Head of Fisheries at GWCT, offers the
blueprint in this respect:
“The issues for salmon are many
and complex. They are facing much tougher conditions in the marine
environment, where global warming and concerns over bycatch are posing
serious threats. But if we are able to improve conditions in our
rivers, and make sure they can grow fitter, larger and stronger and
reproduce in greater numbers, they will stand a better chance, once
they migrate to sea, of returning in larger numbers.
My team has seen first-hand the
changes to the physical nature of the river Frome. In recent years, we
have seen a huge increase in the growth of algae between spring and
autumn which smothers the riverbed, shades and then reduces the growth
of plants like water crowfoot, which are crucial habitats for juvenile
salmon and the insects upon which they feed. We’ve also seen increases
in the quantity of sediment, which is mud running from the riverbanks
and ploughed fields into the river where it smothers and suffocates
salmon eggs.
Excessive algae also reduces the
amount of oxygen available to fish in rivers at night and especially
during the warmer months, this can stress, reduce the growth of and
even kill fish. The algae grows excessively due to high levels of
nutrients - nitrate and phosphate which are released into rivers from
sewage, septic tank discharges and running off agricultural land.
To create a better future for
salmon, we need to tackle these issues together and at scale. To date,
projects have been too small and patchy - mainly due to a lack of
funding and bureaucratic challenges around farming and conservation -
to make the changes needed.”
Now here is a thought: if we took
just one third of the money being spent on ‘fish protection’ at Hinkley
that £250m would be almost enough to buy all the land* along the length
of the River Frome from source to estuary to create a one mile river
protection corridor. Of course, that is never going to happen because,
we will be told, there is no money. But as Hinkley proves, there is the
money, but it is being spent by idiots.
*22,800 acres at £12,000/acre= £268,800,000
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Fly Fishing Film Tour is back!
In more cheerful news
I am pleased to hear that the Fly Fishing Film Tour is returning to the
UK next year, marking its 20th anniversary.
Many of you may recall that it
was first bought to our shores as part of the River Test One Fly
Festival and now it is hosted in 14 countries in 300 venues featuring
some amazing, adrenaline packed short films covering saltwater and
freshwater fly fishing for species around the globe.
If you have not been I promise
you will leave the cinema buzzing with just one thought in the front of
your brain – I MUST GO FISHING! There are five UK showing including London (7 March) and
Stockbridge
(18 March). Tickets are on sale now.
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The usual random
collection of questions this week inspired by the date, sporting
occasions this weekend and the Newsletter topics.
1) Which British newspaper is first published on this
day in 1791 and becomes the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world?
2) Why might a fish be euryhaline?
3) If Lando Norris becomes the F1 World Champion on
Sunday, he will be the second from Somerset. Who was the first?
The answers are
below.
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Have a great weekend. Go Lando!
Best wishes,
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1) The Observer
2) It lives in
both salt and freshwater
3) Jenson Button
in 2009
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TIME IS PRECIOUS. USE IT FISHING
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The Mill, Heathman Street, Nether Wallop,
Stockbridge, England SO20 8EW United Kingdom
01264 781988
www.fishingbreaks.co.uk
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