Levels falling a little on upper beats, still rising lower down.  Not good at present.

You should read the latest from WUF on juvenile survey results.  Talk about trying to pick a decent cherry from a rotten basket.

This comment in particular;

Lower Wye: Salmon fry and parr were recorded at 3 sites between Hereford and Kerne Bridge. This is an area from which they were absent in ‘00s, almost certainly due to excessive soil loss in Herefordshire. Their presence is testament to the work local farmers have been doing to look after their soils since then.

The full results from this year will be posted on our website soon.

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There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the result of any farm work done to protect soul erosion.  Where is the evidence = there is none.  Just another of the dozens of such bland unsubstantiated statements we get from WUF every year.

It's cynical deception or plain lying if you prefer that term.

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In case you have not seen this here is an independent review of the film, Artifishal, being shown by WUF after there AGM on the 18th,   It shows in stark reality the shortcomings of the film regarding hatcheries in particular.  I think we all know the mess that is Salmon farming for food.

 Hatcheries do work all over the world.  The one that WUF ran didn't but that's another story for another day perhaps.

ARTIFISHAL…….A Review

In general, the film is disappointingly one-sided and misrepresents the science behind recovery programmes for endangered salmon. It also makes several false claims regarding the impacts of hatcheries and makes no attempt to present a balanced argument.

The film makers claim :

•          Hatchery salmon are genetically inferior to wild salmon: Hatchery salmon bred from wild brood-stock only have wild genes, but they may be expressed differently because they are in a different environment. These epigenetic changes can be heritable, but they can also be reversible when the fish are returned to the wild, this is supported by the fact that many well-run programmes now achieve relative reproductive success equivalent to wild fish.

Hatcheries are often accused of producing many fish that would not  have survived  in the wild and hence have by-passed the "survival of the  fittest" process.  In  fact, survival of early life-stages of salmonids is not heritable, it is controlled  mainly by the environment and so is down to chance .

•          Hatcheries are to blame for the decline of the salmon populations in the Pacific North West of America. This is completely unfounded, salmon populations in this area were first impacted by the initial European settlers through fishing and logging activities and then during the twentieth century by the construction of many dams (e.g. Columbia River system - over 400 dams and loss of more than half of available spawning habitat). The area continues to be impacted today by forestry, urbanisation, pollution and the effects of large hydropower schemes .

•          Hatcheries don't work. Approximately 40% of all salmon caught in Alaska and 80- 90% of those caught in the Pacific North West are hatchery fish, numbering in their millions and adding significant sums to state economies. There are several examples where hatcheries have also restored abundance and genetic diversity of some threatened salmon populations. They also help tribal, First Nation Communities to continue their centuries old traditions and way of life.

•          Hatchery fish outcompete wild fish.  Most  of the available  evidence suggests that it is the other way around, hatchery fish can be naive due to short term domestication leaving them more vulnerable to predation and starvation .

•          Hatcheries are responsible for the decline of the Orea population in the Pacific North West Area. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) list the three main threats to the Southern Resident Orea populations as insufficient prey, contaminants (from prey, wastewater treatments, sewage, pesticides) and impacts from vessels and sound. Chinook  salmon are  known to  be the  preferred prey of Orcas and these have suffered severe declines over the last century. In fact, the NOAA list several hatchery programmes as important measures to  recover chinook salmon populations for Orcas . The NOAA states "NOAA Fisheries has found that hatchery Chinook more than compensate for fish lost to the dams in terms of the total numbers of Chinook available to the killer whales".

•          The film clearly attempts to portray all hatcheries practices as harmful by continually showing pictures of dead fish, fish culling and unusual stocking and brood-stock collection techniques. For example:

•       Pictures of dead spawning salmon at the bottom of the rivers are continually shown, but this is a natural phenomenon.

•       Culling of brood-stock in the hatchery and on the riverbank is shown without the explanation that ALL Pacific salmon die after spawning anyway.

•       Shots of aerial stocking of juvenile trout into lakes and flushing from large tanker lorries into the estuary are shown for dramatic purposes but again there is no context . US Government Wildlife managers claim up to 95% survival rate using this technique

•       Shots of dead frozen salmon are designed again to infer hatchery = dead salmon. These salmon spawned at the hatchery have already made their contribution to restoration and would have died anyway . Their carcasses are an important source of nutrients for the catchment and are being returned by school children who are also being educated about the life of the salmon and the importance of its habitat .

According to the documentary, commercial net pen aquaculture is also responsible for severe declines in salmon through disease transmission and interbreeding with wild fish. Although there are significant risks to open water net pen rearing (sea lice proliferation, fouling of waterway bed, escapees) it is fair to say that commercial farming has continually made strides to limit these impacts, although more could probably be done. It is unfair, however, to attribute the visible significant declines in salmon abundance to commercial salmon farming in the Pacific North West. The biggest problem is clearly loss of spawning and nursery habitat.

There seems little point in demonising commercial aquaculture when it is clearly becoming more and more important in terms of global food supply. A 2018 FAO report stated that Aquaculture supplied approximately half of the world’s food fish in 2015 with the other half coming from capture fisheries. Of these capture fisheries, 30% were fishing stocks beyond safe biological limits.