The Harvest of the Sea / A contribution to the natural and economic history of the British food fishes

by James Glass Bertram

Mr. William Brown, in his painstaking account of The Natural History of the Salmon, also bears his testimony on this part of the salmon question:—“Until the parr takes on the smolt scales, it shows no inclination to leave the fresh water. It cannot live in salt water. This fact was put to the test at the ponds, by placing some parrs in salt water—the water being brought fresh from the sea at Carnoustie; and immediately on being immersed in it the fish appeared distressed, the fins standing stiff out, the parr-marks becoming a brilliant ultramarine colour, and the belly and sides of a bright orange. The water was often renewed, but they all died, the last that died living nearly five hours. After being an hour in the salt water, they appeared very weak and unable to rise from the bottom of the vessel which contained them, the body of the fish swelling to a considerable extent. This change of colour in the fish could not be attributed to the colour of the vessel which held them, for on being taken out they still retained the same brilliant colours.”

All controversies relating to the growth of salmon may now be held as settled. It has been proved that the parr is the young of the salmon; the various changes which it undergoes during its growth have been ascertained, and the increase of bulk and weight which accrues in a given period is now well understood. But we still require much information as to the “habits” of fish of the salmon kind.

In a recent conversation with Mr. Marshall of Stormontfield, while comparing notes on some of the disputed points of salmon growth, we both came to the conclusion that the following dates, founded on the experiments conducted at Stormontfield, might be taken as marking the chief stages in the life of a salmon. An egg deposited in the breeding-boxes say in December 1852 yielded a fish in April 1853; that fish remained as a parr till a little later than the same period of 1854, when, being seized with its migratory instinct, and having upon it the protecting scales of the smolt, it departed from the pond into the river Tay on its way to the sea, having previously had conferred upon it a certain mark by which it could be known if recaptured on its return. It was recaptured as a grilse within less than three months of its departure (July), and weighed about four pounds. Being marked once more, it was again sent away to endure the dangers of the deep; and lo! was once more taken, this time a salmon of the goodly weight of ten pounds! But there comes in here the question if it was the same fish, for it is said that the smolt in some cases remains a whole winter in the sea, and therefore that the fish I have been alluding to was a smolt that had never come back as a grilse. I have a theory that half of the brood of smolts sent to sea do remain over the winter and come back as salmon, while the others come back almost immediately as grilse. It is possible, however, that any particular fish may lose its river for a season, and be in some other water for a time as a grilse, and then finding its birth-stream come once again to its “procreant cradle.” The rapidity of salmon growth, however, I consider to be undoubtedly proved.

A good deal has been said in various quarters about the best way of marking a young salmon so that at some future stage of its life it may be easily identified. Cutting off the dead fin is not thought a good plan of marking, because such a mark may be accidentally imitated and so mislead those interested, or it may be wilfully imitated by persons wishing to mislead. Of the smolts sent away from the Stormontfield ponds during May 1855, 1300 were marked in a rather common way—viz. by cutting off the second dorsal fin—and twenty-two of these marked fish were taken as grilse during that same summer, the first being caught on the 7th of July, when it weighed three pounds. Mr. Buist, who took charge of the experiments, was quite convinced that a much larger number of the marked fish than twenty-two was caught, but many of the fishermen, having an aversion to the system of pond-breeding, took no pains to discover whether or not the grilse they caught had the pond-mark, and so the chance of still further verifying the rate of salmon growth was lost. A reward offered by Mr. Buist of 2s. per pound weight for each grilse that might be brought to his office, led to an imitation of the mark and the perpetration of several petty frauds in order to get the money. The mark was frequently imitated, and one or two fish were brought to Mr. Buist which almost deceived him into the belief of their being some of the real marked fish. As Mr. Buist says—“So cunningly had this deception been gone about, that a casual observer might have been deceived. When the fin was cut off the recent wound was far too palpable; and to hide this the man cut a piece of skin from another fish and fixed it upon the wounded part. I examined this fish, which was lying alongside of an undoubted pond-marked fish, which had the skin and scales grown over the cut, and I am satisfied that it would be impossible to imitate the true mark by any process except by marking the fish while young.”[5] Peter Marshall and also Mr. Buist agree with me in saying that the number of fish taken, each being minus the dead fin, was a sufficient proof that these fish were really the pond-bred ones returned as grilse. It is impossible that twenty or thirty grilse could have all been accidentally maimed within a few weeks, and each present the same—the very same appearance. Various other plans of marking were tried by the authorities at Stormontfield, some of which were partially successful, and added another link to the chain of evidence, which proves at any rate that many individual fish have grown from the smolt to the grilse state in the course of a very few weeks.

FISHES OF THE SALMON FAMILY.
1. Salmon. 2. Grilse. 3. Sea-trout. 4. Herling.

Leaving the salmon as an object of natural history, and looking at it as an article of commerce, I find that there exists a considerable dread of its speedy extinction, which, taking into account the state of the fisheries, is not at all to be wondered at. The English salmon-fisheries have utterly declined; the Irish fisheries are decaying; and the eagerness with which the Scotch people are rushing to Parliament for new laws indicates a fear of a similar fate overtaking the fisheries of the North. The “breeches-pocket” view of the question has recently become of considerable importance, in consequence of this fear of failing supplies; for the commerce carried on in this particular fish has been at the rate of over £100,000 a year; and although our salmon-fisheries are not nearly equal in value to the herring and white fisheries, still the individual salmon is our most tangible fish, and brings to its owner a larger sum of money than any other member of the fish family. Indeed, of late years this “monarch of the brook” has become emphatically the rich man’s fish; its price for table purposes, at certain seasons of the year, being only compatible with a large income; and liberty to play one’s rod on a salmon river is a privilege paid for at a high figure per annum. Such facts at once elevate Salmo salar to the highest regions of luxury: certainly, salmon can no longer find a place on the tables of the poor; for we shall never again hear of its selling at twopence per pound, or of farm-servants bargaining not to be compelled to eat it oftener than twice a week.

At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively flock to the breeding-grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. Then the water-fowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been forsaken by the fish; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova be destroyed perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to salmon-spawning in the natural way, I may just mention that a whitling of about three-quarters of a pound weight has been taken in the Tay with three hundred impregnated salmon ova in its stomach! If this fish had been allowed to dine and breakfast at this rate during the whole of the spawning season it would have been difficult to estimate the loss our fisheries sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while as parr they have been taken out of our streams in such quantities as to be made available for the purposes of pig-feeding and as manure! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand ever becomes a full-grown salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that one hundred and fifty millions of salmon ova are annually deposited in the river Tay; of which only fifty millions, or one-third, come to life and attain the parr stage; that twenty millions of these parrs in time become smolts, and that their number is ultimately diminished to 100,000; of which 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000 being left for breeding purposes. Sir Humphrey Davy calculates that if a salmon produce 17,000 roe, only 800 of these will arrive at maturity. It is well, therefore, that the female fish yields 1000 eggs for each pound of her weight; for a lesser degree of fecundity, keeping in view the enormous waste of life indicated by these figures, would long since—especially taking into account the various very destructive modes of fishing that used a few years ago to be in use—have resulted in the utter extinction of this valuable fish.

SALMON-WATCHER’S TOWER ON THE RHINE.