Earlier this month, delegates to the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science heard a sombre warning from the Irish-born scientist, Prof John Halley, of St Andrew's University in Scotland. Prof Halley said that a mass global extinction of species, rivalling that which wiped out the dinosaurs, was under way as a result of human activity, especially the destruction of the world's rain forests.
The sense of pre-millennial foreboding which he engendered was deepened last week in Galway when the director of the Salmon Research Agency, Dr Ken Whelan, spoke to the Fifth International Atlantic Salmon Symposium. The overall salmon catch in Ireland had fallen from an average of 600,000 fish in the 1980s to only 120,000 this year, he said. "In recent years, we have seen the catch decline to a level of 350,000 to 400,000, but this year's levels can only be described as catastrophic." News of declining salmon stocks are, sadly, nothing new. But Dr Whelan's message was doubly remarkable: first, for the sheer scale of the collapse; and second, because he attributed it, at least in part, to the effects of global warming. Research had "conclusively linked" increased mortality among salmon during the oceanic phase of their life-cycle to temperature changes in critical feeding grounds in the north-west Atlantic, he said. Whether or not the wild Atlantic salmon, honoured in Ireland since pre-history as the "king of fish", has been doomed in the long term to extinction by the depredations of mankind can only be a matter of conjecture. The same question could be asked of the troubled sea trout, whose place in Irish angling heritage is threatened by an environmental unknown. We simply know too little about the process and effects of climatic change - and, indeed, about the mysterious, Odyssean life-cycle of the salmon - to venture even an educated guess; likewise with the sea trout, the Irish Salmon Growers' Association has warned. But in the immediate term, the figures quoted by Dr Whelan can only deepen concern about the future of both commercial salmon fishing and the recreational angling industry.
In the wake of Dr Whelan's remarks, there are sure to be renewed calls to ban drift-netting as a means of conserving stocks. We will hear reminders that the economic value of salmon angling now far exceeds that of commercial salmon fishing - an estimated £13 million annually, compared with £2 million - and enjoinders not to put this growing sector at risk.
But Dr Whelan was at pains not to blame driftnet fishermen for the latest decline in stocks and the Minister for the Marine, Dr Woods, should resist any temptation to hasty, ill-judged action. The programme of action laid out a year ago by the report of the Salmon Management Task Force (set up under the last government) remains a sound one. It included a change in the commercial season, a six-mile limit on fishing at sea, tagging fish at point of sale to eliminate illegal catches, quota systems and further research. These measures should stay on course. The report struck an equitable balance between the needs of competing interest groups, and between the demands of conservation and coastal livelihoods. Human life-cycles too are at stake.