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Conservation of Salmon (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/390)
Our next item of business is consideration of a negative instrument. I welcome to the meeting Jackie Baillie, who is attending for this item.
Do any members have any comments on the regulations?
Thank you, convener. I thank you and the members of the committee for your considerable forbearance and for giving me an opportunity to speak. I do so on behalf of my constituents in the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association. The consideration of the regulations has become an annual fixture in my calendar, and in this case we are talking about Scottish statutory instrument 2025/390. Members can also be forgiven for thinking that this is a bit like groundhog day, because I see many of the same faces around the table.
At the heart of the issue is a continuing problem with the reliability of the data that is used. I have been talking about salmon conservation and regeneration since 2017. Members will be pleased to hear that I will not be rehearsing everything that I have said since then, but it is remarkably consistent. Last year, I lodged a motion to annul the SSI. I have chosen not to do so this year but I assure the cabinet secretary, who I hope will read what has happened at committee, that I will do so in the future if things do not improve substantially.
Last year, officials and the cabinet secretary said that data about catches on the River Endrick was robust, which was clearly an aspirational declaration rather than a factual one and I will demonstrate why. Since last year, considerable engagement has taken place between the LLAIA and Marine Scotland, resulting in the identification of new fisheries that were not previously known about, the identification of two stretches of the Endrick totalling 1.3km for which no ownership details have been established, and much more besides.
That demonstrates what we have all been saying all along—the data is not good enough and it is certainly not robust. That is true for other waters. Although I am here representing Loch Lomond, others share concerns about data.
Not for the first time, the LLAIA has invested considerable time and effort in trying to ensure that Marine Scotland has an accurate and complete view of Endrick fisheries and owners. Why it has taken repeated efforts over many years to get to this position is, frankly, more than disappointing, and it is little wonder that confidence in the process and the accuracy of the data is less than fulsome.
I am sure that the committee will appreciate that having an accurate view of the fisheries and owners on the Endrick is one thing, but ensuring that owners return catch data is another thing entirely. There are concerns that there appears to be no real enforcement or follow-up by Marine Scotland of the catch data. We are therefore again faced with relying on incomplete data on fisheries and owners and incomplete data if returns are not made.
As I said, when I looked back to refresh my memory of our discussions, I was struck by how I am making exactly the same arguments year after year and the same arguments that the committee understands. I am, however, not one just to bring the committee a problem. I brought the committee a solution previously, which was a suggestion to use fish counters as a means of removing subjectivity and the need to estimate catches. It would bring real rigour to the process. My recollection is that the cabinet secretary thought that it was a good idea, as did members of the committee. Disappointingly, however, in the time that has elapsed, nothing appears to have been done. Here is a relatively easy way of using quantitative data rather than estimates and assumptions. Convener, I am nothing if not persistent, so I make the suggestion again in the same spirit that I did previously.
However, we cannot keep coming back, saying the same things and having the same conversations because the data has not improved and nothing has changed. Therefore, I respectfully suggest that, if Marine Scotland does not improve what it does, or at least trials the use of fish counters—I offer the Endrick as a suitable site for that—I will regretfully be back here next year with a motion to annul. At the end of the day, we are not doing anything to help salmon conservation or regeneration if we keep relying on poor or incomplete data.
Thank you, convener, for giving me the opportunity to speak.
It also gives me the chance to comment. Anecdotally, there are more constituents like yours, who have concerns about data capture, but, given the difficulty in changing the mythology that the marine directorate uses to calculate the health or otherwise of our rivers, they no longer come forward to suggest that we annul the instrument. However, that does not mean that there is no desire to see methods changed.
The robustness of the data is incredibly important. As we know, the present system across Scotland is generally based on rod catches. More fish tend to be caught in rivers that are fished more regularly and heavily, so they are graded higher. A good example is the River Luce in Galloway, which supports a healthy salmon population, by modern standards, that is. Whether it has been healthy historically is not clear, but it is a category 3 river. That is mostly because of the light angling effort on the river and the fact that the owners of the fishing rights only allow fly fishing, so far more fish probably get away than are caught compared with other rivers.
With a falling angling effort because of less angling, and also because of climate change affecting weather conditions, including causing droughts, it means that river gradings will be less accurate.
The national electrofishing programme for Scotland—NEPS—was developed by the marine directorate and widely welcomed. It started in 2018 and ran again in 2019. The programme did not run in 2020, because of Covid, but it was run in 2021 and 2023. It has not been operated in 2024 or 2025, due to what I understand to be a lack of funding.
There was wide recognition that NEPS was a good project that involved many trusts and those with an interest in rivers working together with the marine directorate to get a more accurate picture. That was considered along with fish counters. We heard in previous evidence sessions that the marine directorate recognised how important fish counters are. I am concerned that there has not been a roll-out of fish counters to make the data more accurate. There are also concerns that the NEPS project has not been restarted and is not attracting funding. It could remove some of the reliance on rod catch data, which is not as good as it may have been in the past.
I was interested in Jackie Baillie’s solution involving fish counters. My understanding is that fish counters already feed into the annual assessment through the fish counter network, but I wonder whether there is a concern that the network is not comprehensive, that the counters are not in the right rivers or that the data is not being weighted properly.
That is certainly a question that we can ask.
We perhaps do not want to put that on to Jackie Baillie; we could ask the Government about it. There are fish counters in the Government’s data-gathering mix, but how comprehensive is that?
From my memory of it, there was an understanding that fish counters would be rolled out more generally, because they were seen as a very effective tool for accurate data collection.
When Jackie Baillie was speaking earlier, she mentioned that the problem existed in her patch. It will be replicated across the country—it certainly is in mine. Fisheries organisations around Inverness and in Inverness-shire are keen for fish counters to be introduced. I have been trying to get a meeting with Government agencies about it for quite some time. I understand that there are complications around who makes the decision and how many people are involved. At this stage, I am still trying to sort out a meeting with the marine directorate, NatureScot and the Scottish Government, but it seems that most people agree that fish counters are the way forward.
We are obviously coming to the end of the parliamentary session, and this matter will be a problem for the committee in the new session. Like us, the new committee members might be totally unaware of the matter until it lands on their desks. It might be worth our putting it in our annual report and information for the next committee. At the beginning of the next session, it will have time to examine things in more depth. It could consider the matter in the first instance, rather than reacting to an SSI appearing, by which time it could be too late. We got information about the matter, but I am talking about the basis of the decision making rather than about what data is being collected at the moment.
My suggestion is that we follow up this agenda item with a letter, asking specifically about the roll-out of fish counters and, potentially, the continuation of the NEPS scheme. As part of our legacy report, which we will be dealing with at the end of March, we should have a specific section referring to the on-going problems that have been raised with this committee. The future committee should consider that and potentially do a bit of work that we have been unable to do at this time. Is everybody happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms Baillie.
That concludes our business in public.
12:54
Meeting continued in private until 13:35.
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