On Salmon Fishing.
Previously there has been no limitation on the amount of salmon we can harvest. Then came fishing regulations and ‘Catch and Release’(CR). It is obvious that we need some kind of limitation on the fishing, the decreasing catch statistics shows it. Salmon from hatcheries only support a non natural predator population and the diversity needed for salmon survival in the sea is destroyed, the return is about 0.5 %. We don’t like CR. It destroys the catch statistics and we don’t think it work, the salmon roe is sustaining oxygen dept and do not develop properly. Also, CR gives fishing the name of a blood sport. We think of fishing as harvesting from the land and believe that we shall treat the salmon as any other animal, like the moose, deer, etc. There shall be a limitation on the amount of harvest salmon corresponding to the ones available, there must be enough salmon left to fill the spawning grounds.
We count the amount of spawning salmon in pools belonging to a farmer and say that from 2 to 20 salmons return from each hen fish. In rivers where the salmon don’t fill the river each year we have to keep track of each yearly population or even a population from a specific area in the river. We assume that the amount of salmon in mean will wary like a sinus curve starting with year 0 and end with year 10, etc. The largest number of returning salmon comes the first years in a 10 year cycle and the least the last years. In bad years the amount of returning salmon from a spawning hen gets even with two and other years it will come back more salmon than the river can support and that’s our harvest.
Say that a farmer needs a minimum of 100 hen salmon to fill the spawning grounds in his part of the river, an investigation by students will determine it. Then he will have ca 1100 returning salmon (hen and cock) year 0, a 2000 year three, ca 1100 year six, a 200 year eight and about 1100 year ten. Off cause the sinus curve can be broken and adjusted according to the river, a hard sea lice pressure, etc., but you can start with it. If you deduct 200 fish (hen and cock fish) from the returning salmon you get the number of salmon you can fish on the farmers beat. In practice the first five years will hold no limitations to fishing. Year eight you are not allowed to fish at all and year seven may contain very few harvest salmon before the fishing stops.
We say:
Discontinue hatcheries
Discontinue Catch and Release.
Let fishing be a population based harvest.
Let the river support diversity.