Dear Dr Campbell

8th August 2010

Dear Dr Campbell, salute.

 

I am, as you know, an avid reader of your blog. 

All that data analysis, meetings, replying to correspondence (except mine of course), up and down to Pitlochry.

The habitat work ended six or seven years ago, what have you done since then to put one extra Smolt into the sea at Berwick?  What has all this analysis, these meetings done to put one fish in the river?

I see you have been up the Dye and are now telling us that there is no genetic lineage amongst the Whiteadder salmon - it is a new population and unlikely to have any "genetic distinctiveness".

I suppose Whiteadder must be like the Tyne, not a fish ran the Tyne for decades but hatchery stocking does not seem to have done any damage there does it?  They are all "new" fish.

I was also wondering how you came to these genetic conclusions - it is all guesswork until markers have been identified but you are able to announce that they are new fish.  It must be very nice to be able to make these pronouncements by guesswork.

It would been rather more interesting to know the genetic background of all the Tweed fish and then start to look for answers.

In that context, why are you sampling only a limited number of fish?  Everyone I talk to thinks that a bank of tissue/scale samples (at 50p a shot) with a size/sex/date database would be a good starting point.  We could hit the ground running when genetic markers are finally identified. 

So why are we not getting on with it?  Is it because you have been told not to do it?  Who by?  Or are you too busy running up and down to Pitlochry with an electro fishing machine to even think about it?

Yours sincerely,

Tweed Lover

 


Dr Campbell, is there anybody there?

 

Dr Ronald Campbell,
Head Biologist,
The Tweed Foundation.

29.6.2010                                           

Dear Doctor Campbell,

It has been a depressing couple of weeks. 

I was sorry to see that for the second year on the trot your Benefactors’ demonstration has fallen flat.  No decent trout or grayling last year.  No lamprey larvae this year. What is the Benefactors treat going to be next year?  Third time lucky, have you tried the Dee?

I drove the A7 the other Friday afternoon.  What an awful sight.  It was mid June and many of the little streams were literally dry.  The top end of Ewes Water had completely gone.  Bleached stones forming a sculpture across the fields.

The top of the Teviot looked grim and I imagine that the upper Tweed and its tributaries are a mess.

What damage has been done to the fly life, the stocks of baby fish?  What is happening to all our baby salmon and sea trout?  How much damage was done by November's floods?  How long will it take to recover?

We could, of course, have an insurance policy if we had had hatcheries (I stress the plural) in place to help those struggling families of fish that have their place of birth in some of the minor tributaries which are now dry.   Is it not a shame that there has been no forward planning and that you have a completely closed mind as far as hatcheries are concerned?

On I went  along the A7.  On to Kelso and down to Coldstream.  One after the other after the other.   Irrigation pumps taking water from our critically low rivers.  Networks of pipes everywhere sucking life from the system. 

Of course it is not all bad news.  When you arrive, the peace and quiet of a favourite summer pool is broken by the unending din of a diesel run pump the size of a small portacabin and our lucky landowner (I believe represented on the Commission - of course no conflict of interest) is going to break the bank this year.  Irrigated potatoes are going to be worth real money.

What effect does all that abstraction in a drought year have on our juvenile fish stocks and on the level of weed growth in the river? 

I was talking to a friend today.  He said the Lune was 6" below summer.  There were some big thunderstorms last night and a small rise.  He said you could smell the river as he walked with the dog, it stank.  It was a filthy, weedy green.

How many of the Tweed proprietors own land along the water courses and are abstracting water for crop irrigation?  How many are there?  How much water is being removed?  You pay lip service to the Tweed forum.  Why is abstraction something we do not talk about at Drygrange?  Agricultural pollution is a taboo not to be mentioned subject in the newly re-furbished corridors of power.

This morning my mind turned to your learned paper on salmon genetics.  By “your”  I assumed that the Oracle article on genetics posted on the Foundation’s blog was yours.  I did rather wonder because it seemed to have been written with a degree of misunderstanding.

Was that “Tweed Lover” right when he (or is it she?) wrote and said the seventeen “markers” chosen to identify families of salmon have proved disappointing and that others are being sought.  If you can't remember what you were asked, have a peep in that pile of unanswered post.

Do we agree within the next couple of years it is likely markers will by then have been identified?  And it will then be possible to say whether this salmon comes from this area of the river just as the laser research can tell us whether this salmon has been in that area of the sea.   That is all that it boils down to.

The cost of genetic analysis is tumbling, the third of generation of sequencing machines is about to emerge on to the market but we seem to have no plans on the Tweed to take samples from a range of fish throughout the catchment and throughout the season.  I think you were very naughty when you completely ignored our offer to take samples, are you not a little bit embarrassed?  Just a little bit?

Scale samples taken years ago are really not the answer are they?  Things move on as your learned papers about the changes in the runs so clearly illustrate.

We need to know what is happening today do we not?  We need to know which families of fish are in danger, which families we need to support.   Is that right?

Do you have a plan?  Were I to ring Pitlochry I think that I would be told that it would be a good idea if you did have a plan and we had it up and running now.  Are they wrong?

I then looked at your article on salmon catch rates. It rather seems that every time there is a controversial issue such as this the Tweed is out of step with all the other research.

The government (Pitlochry) line is that there is a much larger percentage of spring fish than you claim  that are caught more than once.   Why is the Tweed different to everyone else?  Why are your findings different to those on the Carron?

 Finally, I had almost forgotten your acoustic tagging programme.  How many salmon, how many sea trout have been acoustically tagged and how many have gone AWOL?

As always, looking forward with anticipation.

Yours sincerely,

Tweed Lover

We try again.......

Dr R. Campbell,
The Tweed Foundation,
Drygrange Steading


14.6.2010 By FAX


Dear Dr Campbell,

Do you agree with these propositions culled from the explanatory leaflet published by the University of Southampton in the context of their scale research?

"To predict the response of specific river stocks to future changes, we need to locate their feeding grounds.

This will benefit stock management on a river-specific basis and will identify populations that are likely to be most vulnerable to changing conditions over the next few decades."

and

"Now, we want to extend the project to cover all main salmon rivers in England and Wales to identify which river stocks share common feeding grounds and which are most vulnerable to environmental variability.

Scale archives are immensely important for understanding growth and behavioural responses to environmental changes at sea."

If you do:

1. what plans do you have to collect a comprehensive sample of scales from all types and sizes of fish throughout the Tweed catchment and throughout the year?

2. If each scale was accompanied by a DNA sample from the same fish would you not then be in a position to see which of our several families of salmon were most at risk? What plans do you have to collect both scales and DNA samples from a proper cross section of fish?

3. Do you not agree that you cannot make a decision as to whether a hatchery (hatcheries) might be required until you know which fish are at risk?

4. If our spring fish are particularly vulnerable and if no amount of conservation will not improve their plight in the areas in which they feed/travel in the sea please explain your catch and release policy.

5. Why have you ignored letters particularly when you have an offer of help? Do you not think it is rather rude? Are you being told not to answer?


Yours faithfully,



Tweed Lover


Dr Ronald Campbell,
Head Biologist,
The Tweed Foundation.

11.6.2010


Dear Dr Campbell,

The weeks come the weeks go and still no reply, you must be a very busy person.

When you go a-tagging all those flotillas of salmon the netsmen are putting back how many (now we are in June) are "springers".

I have a teensy weeny feeling that there are not many springers left in June.

Try this: pretend to be looking down, tagging a fish. Suddenly look up and see if those smiley faces with the net are smiling at you.

I bet they are - how much is this costing a week - because you know what, you are paying through the nose for them to put back summer salmon.

You know what they say? There's one born every day.

Yrs

Tweed Lover.



6.6.2010


Dearest Dr Campbell,

I have not had a reply to the letter I sent to you by fax on the 14th of May.

Is this because you:

• are too busy giving seminars?

• Too busy going to seminars?

• Too busy talking to the Rotary Club? The Lions, The Round Table, the Women's Institute?

• Too busy looking for missing acoustic tags?

• Have been told not to reply?

• Do not want to lower yourself to send a condescending reply to a simpleton who knows nothing about salmon?

• Have been rude, I hope not given that I have been contributing to your wages for 25 years?

• The Foundation cannot afford the stamp?

• Your reply has been lost in the post?

• Or a combination of these reasons?

Never mind, shall we try again? I take it you have heard of the Atlantic Salmon Trust – have you read about their latest research?

They look to me to be on the point of demonstrating that your received wisdom about salmon behaviour at sea and in the rivers is, to put it bluntly, balls.

And what is more your leader's spring fish policy looks as though it might be on very shaky ground.

Agreed?

I have an idea. The AST are independent. Would it be a good idea if the Foundation was taken over as a branch of the AST based at Drygrange and paid for by the RTC?

What do you think?

Looking forward to hearing from you.


Tweed Lover

Dr Ronald Campbell,
Head Biologist,
The Tweed Foundation.

14.5.2010
Dear Doctor Campbell,


The salmon genome has yet to be unravelled.

It is not yet possible to "genetically fingerprint" a fish in such a way that fish A can be said to be a relative of Fish B or Smolt C.

You cannot yet do for salmon what DNA fingerprinting can do to identify families or, for example whether you, Dr Campbell, have come from Viking or Gallic stock.

Seventeen salmon DNA markers have been identified which, promising at first, have come to disappoint in fact we are looking at two to three years, perhaps more, before we have success.

At that stage we could, hopefully, start to say that there are specific families of fish which are closely related and which inhabit this or that tributary.

In order to start to work out the puzzle, given the vast numbers of fish involved, we would then have to start a structured programme of sampling of individual salmon or sea trout (or even brown trout given there appears to be some hybridisation going on) and that programme may take five to ten years.

In the meantime around 600 samples have been taken from Tweed Fish, pro tem.

Each sample bottle and its alcohol costs circa 50p. There is then the cost of collection and storage until the samples are ready for analysis. It is hardly expensive given the cost of fishing.

Could you explain why you are taking these samples and the structure within which it is being done?

Given that when the science permits (which may be in the next couple of years) you will start to take samples in a structured way, why have you not started now?

I imagine that you would select quite a number of beats on the river and its Tributaries and start sampling from the beginning of each season. The record with the sample would say when and where the fish was caught, its sex, its size and so on.

In that way you could hit the ground running.  By the time the science arrived -as it undoubtedly will in the relatively near future - you would have a structured range of samples ready to begin.  Why are you delaying?

I am sure that my beat would be prepared to fund the taking of samples and keeping records. I would have thought that if a couple of the boatmen were trained we could produce 150 to 250 samples a year at a maximum cost to us of £125.00.

I would have thought that all the beats you would need would be delighted to join in if, for once, they could see something positive was being done.

What I am asking, I suppose, is why are we not anticipating the latest scientific developments and planning ahead?  It may well be the key to the future of the river.

Yours sincerely,


Tweed Lover