From Abundance to Silence. The cry of the Salmon

The following is an excerpt from one of the chapters I’m writing for my book right now, but I feel it needs to be aired. Please share the message far and wide.

I have often thought that the story of the salmon is, in many ways, the story of ourselves. A tale of abundance, of resilience, of journeys made against impossible odds. But also, a tale of loss, of decline, of promises broken. For salmon fisherman, if you sit by the mouth of any river in May and June, listen closely, you can almost feel and hear the echo of what once was, the shimmer of silver clouds of smolts leaving, not just rivers with financial interest, but in the past, all rivers flooded the sea with millions of smolts, shimmering bait balls that once helped hold the North Atlantic together. 

When I was a boy, I never questioned that salmon would always be there. They were as much a part of the landscape as the limestone hills, the whisky stills, or the stories in the country pub after a day on the river. But as I grew older, and as I spent my life on the Spey, I began to see the change, the salmon’s abundance was not eternal. It was fragile, and it was slipping away. 

The Age of Abundance 

Before the Industrial Revolution, the rivers of Europe poured life into the sea. The Rhine alone was said to produce more salmon than all other European rivers combined. Imagine that for a moment, a single river feeding the ocean with more smolts than the rest of the continent combined. Add to that the Tay, the Spey, the Dee, the Loire, the Garonne, the countless rivers of Norway and Iceland, and you begin to picture the scale of it. 

Each spring, millions upon millions of smolts slipped downstream, their bodies transformed by the mysterious alchemy of smoltification. They gathered instinctively, shoaling together, forming vast bait balls that pulsed and shimmered like living galaxies. To predators, they were irresistible. Cod, haddock, pollock, seabirds, even whales, everything fed on them. And yet, because there were so many, enough always survived. That was the genius of the anadromous bait ball, safety in numbers and safety in fresh water, those huge numbers spilled from almost every river in Europe. 

This wasn’t just a salmon strategy. It was an ecological covenant. The smolts from every river in Europe fed the sea, and in return, the sea allowed enough to live, to grow, to return. It was abundance but also balance.  

The First Cracks 

Then came the 19th century, and with it, the Industrial Revolution. Rivers were dammed, straightened, poisoned. The Rhine, once the greatest salmon river of all, was choked by industry until its salmon were gone. Other rivers followed. The bait ball began to shrink. What we must remember at this point is, this period is beyond the living memory of our grandparents. No one can physically talk of this abundance, we can only quote what was written.  

At first, the change was subtle. A few less fish here, a few less there. But predators noticed. Where once they had been overwhelmed by abundance, now they could pick off smolts with ease. The safety-in-numbers strategy began to fail. 

I sometimes think of this as the first betrayal. Not of the salmon, but of ourselves. We broke the covenant. We took the rivers that had given us life and turned them into sewers, into machines. And in doing so, we weakened the very shoals that had sustained the sea for millennia. Homo Sapiens, what an incredibly dumb stupid, greedy species.  

The Age of Intervention 

By the late 19^th and early 20th century, people noticed the decline. Hatcheries were built, nets were strung across estuaries, and still the numbers fell. Mixed-stock netting, catching salmon indiscriminately at sea was particularly destructive. It robbed rivers of their returning adults, breaking the chain of life before it could reach the safety of fresh water. 

The bait ball grew smaller still. Where once it had been a continental phenomenon, stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the fjords of Norway, it became patchy, regional. Scotland and Norway still produced smolts in good numbers, but with many of Scotland rivers now failing to add to the bait ball, even these were shadows of the past. 

Predators adapted. Gannets, seals, larger fish—all became more efficient hunters of the dwindling shoals. Mortality rate of post-smolts soared. The ocean, once survivable through abundance, were becoming a gauntlet of death. 

The Great Unravelling 

By the late 20th century, the decline was undeniable. ICES data showed catastrophic reductions in adult returns. In some rivers, 70–100% of salmon were gone. Southern European stocks collapsed almost entirely. Even the great Scottish rivers, once synonymous with salmon, saw their runs dwindling. The race was now on to try and help. By the 1990s, River netting ceased, and the first salmon were being returned to the river by anglers. Fishing methodology had changed too, with all forms of bait fishing being banned leaving only flyfishing as an option for catching salmon.  

The North Atlantic Oscillation and its influence on ocean currents has a huge influence on food supply in the ocean. Distribution of Zooplankton, the very foundation of the marine food chain, is influenced by whether the oscillation is high or low. In a nutshell, what this means is that some parts of the ocean decline in energy value. Smolts, following particular migration routes, already few in number, now entered an ocean that could not feed them. 

The bait ball was no longer a ball. It was a scatter of individuals, vulnerable and alone searching for food. The evolutionary strategy that had sustained salmon for millions of years was undone in less than two centuries of human activity. More reading on this can be found in this document I wrote 20 years ago here - Atlantic Salmon and the NAO.docx 

The Present Crisis 

Today, we stand at a critical threshold. Only a handful of UK rivers still hold viable salmon populations. Marine survival rates are at historic lows. The bait ball is gone. Without enough smolts to form protective shoals, predation from previously managed predators has become overwhelming. 

Think of what that means. For millions of years, salmon smolts were a cornerstone of the North Atlantic food web. They fed cod, haddock, seabirds, whales. They sustained ecosystems. And because there were always enough, the system worked. Now, with their numbers so low, they can no longer play that role. The predators still hunt them, but the balance is broken. The covenant is shattered. 

Fireside Reflections 

When I sit by the fire and think of all this, I feel both sorrow and anger. Sorrow for the salmon, for the rivers, for the communities that once thrived on their abundance. Anger at the short-sightedness, greed and mismanagement that's brought us here. 

But I also feel something else. Responsibility! Because if we broke the covenant, then it is up to us to restore it. 

We cannot undo, or bring back the Industrial Revolution’s lost centuries. Of course we cannot undo the dams or the pollution overnight. But we can act. We can fight for clean rivers, for restored habitats, for an end to destructive practices like mixed-stock netting and dredging the sea fishing for undersized fish. We can demand that governments treat salmon as the keystone iconic species they are, vital to the health of our seas and our souls. 

The bait ball is more than a biological phenomenon. It is a metaphor for community, for resilience, for survival through togetherness. The salmon teach us that alone, we are vulnerable. Together, we are strong. We need to use technology to help get the real story of the salmon to the eyes and ears of those who can make a difference.  

If we want salmon to survive, we must think like a bait ball. We must join forces; anglers, conservationists, scientists, communities and overwhelm the forces that threaten them. Only with a common goal, can we do this.  

This is not just about fish. It is about us, who we are. The salmon is woven into our history, our culture, our identity. We are a nation of fishermen; to lose this iconic species would be to lose a part of ourselves. 

So let us act. Let us restore the rivers. Let us rebuild the bait ball. Let us honour the covenant once more. 

I often think of my father, my grandfather, and the men who shaped me, those quiet giants who taught me the value of salmon, not just as fish, but as a way of life. They lived in a world where the rivers still ran full, where the bait ball shimmered in the sea like a promise. A world where abundance was taken for granted. They could never have imagined it vanishing. 

But I can. I watched it happen. I saw the decline with my own eyes. In the ’90s and 2000s, I gave everything I had, writing, speaking, pleading on behalf of the fish. Trying so hard to make people see what was slipping away. 

Now, the fireside is warm, the whisky smooth, and the stories, thankfully, still rich. But the river still calls. The salmon still call and if we truly listen, we’ll hear more than just the silence where once there was abundance. We hear a plea for help. A plea to restore the covenant we broke.

This is a bond between people and fish, between sea, river and community, between abundance and responsibility. We broke it. But it’s not too late to mend it. 

The bait ball can return. The covenant can be restored. But only if we act, not just with words, but with hands in the water, boots on the bank, hearts in the right place and the story of this covenant properly told.  

That’s the story I want to leave behind. Not just one of loss, but of renewal. Not just a tale of decline, but of defiance. The story of how we, like the salmon, found strength in numbers—and fought our way back to abundance.