To Sea and Back E-Book

Richard Shelton

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 297

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Combining natural history with beguiling autobiographical and historical narrative, To Sea and Backis a dazzling portrait of a fish whose story is closely intertwined with our own. 'Indispensable and powerful... To Sea and Back mingles history with biography and science... Shelton writes with a poet's ear... A writer to be prized.' -- Tom Adair, Scotsman The Atlantic salmon is an extraordinary and mysterious fish. In To Sea and Back, Richard Shelton combines memoir and deep scientific knowledge to reveal, from the salmon's point of view, both the riverine and marine worlds in which it lives. He explores this iconic fish's journey to reach its feeding grounds in the northern oceans before making the return over thousands of miles to the burns of its birth to reproduce. Along the way, Shelton describes the feats of exploration that gave us our first real understanding of the oceans, and shows how this iconic fish is a vital indicator of the health of our rivers and oceans. Above all, To Sea and Back is the story of Richard Shelton's lifelong passion for the sea and his attempt to solve the perennial enigmas of the salmon's secret life.

Leseprobe

To SEA and BACK

Richard Shelton headed the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory at Pitlochry from 1982 to 2001. He is currently Research Director of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and Chairman of the Buckland Foundation. He lives in Fife. His first book, The Longshoreman: A Life at the Water’s Edge, was published by Atlantic Books in 2004 and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

‘A fascinatingly and wonderfully informed natural history of the Atlantic salmon; Shelton is also a marvellous storyteller... A lifelong observer of fish, with a rich and detailed understanding of the salmon’s life, [he] succeeds in transforming the cliché into a tale that, as quaint as it may sound, is genuinely inspiring. In his capable hands, the salmon regains some of its totemic significance, an animal with a real lesson to teach its human neighbours... Shelton’s love for the salmon and for the world that it inhabits, shines through in this wonderful book... He knows his subject intimately and talks about it with real charm and a natural authority. Yet the real surprise and unexpected pleasure of To Sea and Back is the quality of the writing, which is clear and economical, moving or funny when it needs to be, and often very witty.’ John Burnside, TLS

‘Shelton has lived and breathed his subject... There is a breezy, old-school momentum to this wonderful book... As well as a scientific examination of the challenges the Atlantic salmon faces in seas ever warmer and rivers ever more polluted, it is a love letter to the most noble of our native fish. Shelton’s salmon are undoubtedly Salar’s spiritual descendants.’ Christopher Somerville, The Times

‘This is a book with a large hinterland written by someone whose outlook is genuinely holistic... We need people like Shelton to inspire us.’ Giles Foden, Guardian

‘A book with strong strands of narrative [and] unswerving integrity... Shelton writes not merely lyrically, but clearly... describing it all with a poet’s ear... His work is underpinned by the values embodied in reason, mind, society and order. It is the subtlety of their expression that makes the presence of these concepts in Shelton’s books so indispensable and powerful... He is a writer to be prized.’ Tom Adair, Scotsman

‘Shelton imparts a host of revelations... This handsomely illustrated volume will entertain anglers through winter nights.’ Christopher Hirst, Independent

‘A passionate celebration of the Atlantic salmon... Hats off to Richard Shelton... He writes with humour, enriched with anecdotes and perceptions from a life spent in thrall to the salmon, and has the happy knack of being able to present even complex concepts in a relaxed engaging style... To Sea and Back is a compelling, pleasurable read.’ BBC Wildlife Magazine

‘Salmo salar has become an icon in European culture... This excellent study will prove of interest not only to anglers but to all who enjoy natural history writing at its very best.’ David Profumo, Literary Review

‘Shelton’s searching cast of mind, twinned with piquant humour, produces a salmon book amusing and informative in equal parts... Perhaps not before has such a store of various knowledge been deployed around a single fish with as much charm as in this delightfully illustrated classic-in-the-making... Beguiling.’ Michael Wigan, Country Life

‘To Sea and Back is a remarkable book, a lyrical zoography of the Atlantic salmon that weaves in and out of a wider historical narrative of ocean exploration, fisheries science and personal memoir.’ Richard Hamblyn, London Review of Books

‘Another masterpiece from the fins of The Longshoreman.’ David Bellamy

For Frank Buckland, Victorian Naturalist and Christian Gentleman

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2009 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

This paperback edition published by Atlantic Books in 2010

Copyright © Richard Shelton 2009

The moral right of Richard Shelton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 84354 785 3 eISBN: 978 0 85789 915 6

Printed in Great Britain Atlantic Books An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

The Turning Point

Home at Last

At Glamis

Field Mice for Tea

The Start of a Double Life

At Altries

Drinking Like a Fish

Living and Learning

To Know the Ocean Blue

To Sea with the Smolts

Fat is a Fishy Issue

Of Bugs and Brood Stock

The Hydrographer’s Fish

By Ebrie’s Bleak Banks

On Lancelets, Lampreys and Teleosts

Children of the Sun

Of Salmon and Sea Lords

The Real Meaning of Life

The Pilgrims

Some Words of Thanks

Index

Donald Is Too Late!

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Integrated Illustrations

p. vi Donald Is Too Late! H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Fishing: Salmon and Trout, 1895.

p. 5 The Aberdeenshire Dee. Queen Victoria, Our Life in the Highlands, 1868.

p. 8 Gaffs. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Fishing: Salmon and Trout, 1895.

p. 11 Salmon below a spawning ford. F. Whymper, The Fisheries of the World: An Illustrative and Descriptive Record of The International Fisheries Exhibition 1883, 1883.

p. 13 Cock and hen salmon. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 14 Salmon ova. Frank Buckland, Natural History of British Fishes: Their Structure, Economic Uses and Capture by Net and Rod, 1880.

p. 16 Hen kelt. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 21 The salmon in the stone. Courtesy of Patricia Shelton.

p. 25 The author’s first salmon. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 27 Julia Pastrana. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 29 Brown and black rats. Leclerc de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particuliére: Des Quadrupèdes, 1799–1800.

p. 31 Sir Sidney Smith. © Classic Image/Alamy.

p. 32 Spine from Curiosities of Natural History. Frank Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History, 1893.

p. 34 Frank Buckland holding a cast salmon. Frank Buckland, Notes and Jottings from Animal Life, 1882.

p. 38 Spencer Walpole. © reserved; Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

p. 45 The author and his brother Peter wildfowling. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 47 Newly hatched alevins. Frank Buckland, Natural History of British Fishes: Their Structure, Economic Uses and Capture by Net and Rod, 1880.

p. 49 Atlantic salmon parr. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 54 Elsie Carstairs and her children. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 55 Cock pheasant. Lord Walsingham and Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, Shooting: Field and Covert, 1889.

p. 56 Archibald Ross. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 59 Jock Scott salmon fly. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Fishing: Salmon and Trout, 1895.

p. 61 Split cane rods. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Fishing: Salmon and Trout, 1895.

p. 66 Salmon smolts. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 71 Ramon-y-Cajal. © Interfoto/Alamy.

p. 74 European lobster. F. Whymper, The Fisheries of the World: An Illustrative and Descriptive Record of The International Fisheries Exhibition 1883, 1883.

p. 79 Scientific laboratory. Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, The Voyage of the Challenger, 1877.

p. 80 HMS Beagle. Charles Darwin, A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World, 1890.

p. 82 Charles Wyville Thomson and companions. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

p. 85 Recovering a dredge on HMS Challenger. Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, The Voyage of the Challenger, 1877.

p. 86 Dredging and water sampling apparatus. Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, The Voyage of the Challenger, 1877.

p. 87 Sea lily. Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, The Voyage of the Challenger, 1877.

p. 89 Captain George Nares. © 2003 Topham Picturepoint.

p. 90 HMS Challenger. Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, The Voyage of the Challenger, 1877.

p. 95 Cormorant and shag. © Ivy Press.

p. 96 Three-spined sticklebacks. F. Whymper, The Fisheries of the World: An Illustrative and Descriptive Record of The International Fisheries Exhibition 1883, 1883.

p. 98 Mayfly imago. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Fishing: Salmon and Trout, 1895.

p. 100 Post-smolt salmon. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 102 The author in Arctic waters. Courtesy of the Atlantic Salmon Trust.

p. 107 Fresh-run hen sea trout. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 108 North Atlantic krill. Courtesy of Rod Sutterby.

p. 112 Snail. iStockphoto.

p. 115 Cab horse. © Bettmann/Corbis.

p. 117 An early salmon hatchery. F. Whymper, The Fisheries of the World: An Illustrative and Descriptive Record of The International Fisheries Exhibition 1883, 1883.

p. 119 Frank Buckland holding a tile. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 123 Frank Buckland’s salmon hatching exhibit from The Field, 4 July, 1863. © The British Library Board, LD49.

p. 127 Atlantic salmon scale. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 129 Grilse. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 130 Adult sandeel. © Ivy Press.

p. 133 Johan Hjort. Courtesy of the Atlantic Salmon Trust.

p. 135 Open cod end net. Courtesy of the Atlantic Salmon Trust.

p. 139 Craigdam Kirk. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 140 Young family and friends. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 142 Jar of worms. © Caroline Church.

p. 144 Immature sea trout. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 146 Hen sea trout. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 150 Lesser spotted dogfish. © Wildlife GmbH/Alamy.

p. 152 Lancelet. Paul Whitten/Science Photo Library.

p. 154 River Chess. Courtesy of Richard Shelton.

p. 156 Sea lamprey, lampern, Planer’s lamprey and pride. William Houghton, British Fresh-water Fishes, 1895.

p. 159 Fossil teleost fish. Courtesy of Dr. Mark V. H. Wilson, Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology, University of Alberta.

p. 161 Lantern fish. Richard Ellis/Science Photo Library.

p. 164 Smelt. William Houghton, British Fresh-water Fishes, 1895.

p. 170 Drift netting. F. Whymper, The Fisheries of the World: An Illustrative and Descriptive Record of The International Fisheries Exhibition 1883, 1883.

p. 173 Male basking shark. Frank Buckland, Natural History of British Fishes: Their Structure, Economic Uses, and Capture by Net and Rod, 1880.

p. 175 North Sea cod. Frank Buckland, Natural History of British Fishes: Their Structure, Economic Uses and Capture by Net and Rod, 1880.

p. 179 Humpback whale. © Ivy Press.

p. 181 Scrimshaw. © Tony Arruza/Corbis

p. 182 Whalers and harpoons. F. Whymper, The Fisheries of the World: An Illustrative and Descriptive Record of The International Fisheries Exhibition 1883, 1883.

p. 184 Minke whale. © Ivy Press.

p. 186 Balmoral Castle. Queen Victoria, Our Life in the Highlands, 1868.

p. 188 Flask. © Caroline Church.

p. 190 Hen salmon. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

p. 192 Leaping grilse. © Emily Damstra.

p. 194 Arctic Charr. William Houghton, British Fresh-water Fishes, 1895.

p. 196 Salmon trout. William Houghton, British Fresh-water Fishes, 1895.

p. 199 Grey whale. © Caroline Church.

p. 203 Otter. Mary Evans Picture Library.

p. 204 Victoria Bridge. Getty Images.

Picture Section

1. The salmon in the stone. Courtesy of Patricia Shelton.

2. Frank Buckland. © The Royal College of Surgeons.

3. The cover of the Curiosities of Natural History. Frank Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History, 1893.

4. Buckland’s fish museum. © The Royal College of Surgeons.

5. Cock salmon in breeding dress. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

6. Hen salmon in breeding dress. Courtesy of Robin Ade.

7. Salmon Parr. Sarah Bowdich, The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain, 1828. © The British Library Board, L.R 404.C.S, plate xxix.

8. Seven Salmon. Sarah Bowdich, The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain, 1828. © The British Library Board, L.R 404.C.S, plate xxxvii.

PREFACE

THE sea-run Atlantic salmon is an extraordinary fish. Large and classically proportioned, during its relatively short life it bestrides the two very different worlds of fresh and salt water. Its migrations far into northern seas to grow and subsequent return to its place of birth to breed are nothing less than heroic, and that return, with its dramatic leaps at falls, offers a wildlife spectacle no other fish can match. Its presence – or its absence – is a vital indicator of the relative health of our rivers and seas. Over the millennia, it has accrued totemic as well as culinary importance to the societies that caught it and for most of the last one it has enjoyed the conservation benefits of laws carefully drafted to protect it. Down the long years, the ancient statutes and their successors kept the great fish safe until, over little more than two centuries, first the rivers and estuaries and finally even the seas themselves, fell foul of industrial man’s capacity to plunder the priceless resources he had inherited. For the first time in its long evolutionary history, the survival of the Atlantic salmon as a species can no longer be taken for granted. Many populations have been lost or put at risk, but the enduring power of this remarkable fish to capture the imagination of naturalists and sportsmen has so far proved a sure shield against its extinction.

Since 1967, this fish has had a charity, the Atlantic Salmon Trust, all to itself. It has been my privilege to act as the Trust’s Research Director over a period when scientists much more able than I have revolutionized our understanding of this great yet resolutely enigmatic fish. As observation and experiment have unfolded new insights into the lives of salmon, so the results have appeared both individually in the scientific literature and combined with the outcomes of earlier work in a number of excellent books that provide a systematic summary of current knowledge. It is far too soon to make any attempt to add to their number but my editor, Angus MacKinnon, has persuaded me that it is not too soon to put together a few discursive reflections of my own. The result is not just a book about the salmon, although its life certainly provides the connecting thread. It is also, taking its cue perhaps from Izaak Walton’s description of angling as ‘the contemplative man’s recreation’, a meditation about a good deal else besides.

Richard Shelton

2009

THE TURNING POINT

MIDNIGHT and, for the last time that summer, the kindly sun skimmed just above the far horizon to resume its shallow climb into the Arctic sky. To the east lay the bleak slopes of the Lofoten Islands, the split bodies of cod drying on their racks above the foreshore. A couple of cables to seaward, the high dorsal fin of a male killer whale scythed through the gentle swell as, with the rest of its pod, it tore into a shoal of herring. For the cock salmon cruising at the surface with its schoolmates, the presence of the herring was a welcome diversion. Part way through an exceptional third summer of sea feeding, he would never be large enough to outpace a determined killer, but he was a fast and manoeuvrable swimmer, no longer worth chasing when more vulnerable fish were there for the taking. Now was the time to dive again to feast on the lantern fishes and krill that the subdued light of the ‘simmer dim’ had brought to within 200 feet of the surface. A string of tiny bubbles streamed from his gill covers as his swim bladder shed enough of its gases to speed his sounding. Soon he was among the countless hordes, snapping mercilessly at fishes that scientists call myctophids and that, though he was not to know it, were his distant relatives.

Back at the surface before his stomach was really full, somehow he seemed to be losing his enthusiasm for tearing into these beautiful but feeble little fishes. Indeed, as day followed day and the equinoctial gales ripped across the creaming surface of the grey Norwegian Sea, so he began to respond differently to what the sensory hairs surrounding the magnetite particles in his lateral line were telling the navigational circuits in his brain. More and more his swimming took him toward the south and, before he was aware of what was happening, he and his schoolmates were crossing the edge of the continental shelf and were back in the same North Sea they had left as sprat-sized smolts a sea lifetime ago. The fact was that so rich had been the Arctic feeding that changes in light levels had triggered the earliest stages of puberty and, with it, the sequence of navigational steps that would return him to the highland burn where his life had begun.

He did not starve as, with the Shetlands to starboard, the little company made its southerly passage. The last of the windblown insects driven offshore by the westerlies from the bogs of Caithness were a pleasant distraction and, every so often, a sandeel shoal would make a serious addition to the store of calories he would need to fuel his reproduction. A pod of bottle-nosed dolphins posed a brief danger, but a sudden burst of adrenalin-fired sweeps of his broad tail saw him clear and, of his gallant party, only a seal-scarred straggler fell to natural selection’s pitiless reaper. On past the wide richness of the Moray Firth and the knuckle of the ‘Costa Granite’ and thence inshore to the great beach of Lunan Bay. How strongly the river scent drew him as, close inshore now, he turned north into the residual current that caresses the east coast of Scotland. How lucky he was that the summer drought was long past, a time when many a salmon forced to remain offshore ends its life in the jaws of a grey seal hunting among the rocky headlands or the leaders of the hardy netsmen’s so-called ‘fixed engines’. Only a heron stalking the shallows saw his bow wave as, in the gathering dusk, he slipped over a sand bar into the peat-tinged waters of the River North Esk with their familiar hint of home.

It was not until he was well above the weir at Logie that somehow his brain first became aware that the sequence of scents bathing his nares was not that of home after all. The remnants of the last of the sandeels lay in his stomach, but his appetite had gone and they and his fat stores were all he had left to sustain him in the river until spawning time over twelve long months away. Now was not the time to go in panicky, energy-wasting search of home, but to lie quietly in the deep slow water under the bank until the next spate. By the time it arrived he had long lost the powder-blue back and quicksilver flanks of his sea-going livery in exchange for grey-green above and a softer gleam to his sides. Back over the sand bar, he stemmed again the southerly tide and, swimming steadily north past Stonehaven’s humble Cowie, he rounded Girdle Ness and encountered a scent so enticing that he knew for certain that home lay in the cool waters of Aberdeenshire’s Royal Dee. A tiny burn on the Abergeldie estate had been the place of his birth more than half a decade before, but it would be the best part of a year before he would see it again, a year moreover without food and with only the reserves he had accumulated at sea to sustain him.

The Aberdeenshire Dee at the Linn

The secret of his survival would lie in long periods of quiescence in deep water out of the main flow. For months on end during the summer, the flow in the burn would not even have covered his back. So it was that a succession of deep pools in the main stem of the river would be his waiting rooms and, only when the rains of autumn had swelled his natal burn, would he strive with his fellows for the opportunity to contribute his genes to the next generation of his family. Whether or not he and his like would live to see those climactic days would depend on many things, not least upon the outcome of the last of his encounters with the works of the greatest and most dangerous of his enemies, descendants of the naked apes whose ancestors had first left their African homeland in penny numbers little more than a million years before.

HOME AT LAST

LESS than a short January day had passed since the lordly cock salmon had exchanged the cooling sea for the biting chill of the river in winter. Now, temporarily secure in the holding water below the far bank, he and a lucky few of his fellow pilgrims could afford to rest out of the main current. There, as the river hissed and bubbled overhead, he would finally rid himself of the irritant lice he had brought with him from the sea and digest what remained of its bounty in his shrinking stomach. Here for a time was peace, short weeks of dozing when the gentlest movements of tail and fin were all that were necessary to keep station, automatic reflex responses he could safely leave to the built-in circuitry of his resting brain. It was the collapse of the high pressure system that had brightened the days and frozen the nights that first signalled the end of his reverie. As the air pressure dropped, so snow flurries became heavy falls and, with the thaw, driving sleet gave way to a downpour so fierce that even the ice in the high corries began to break away to load the rapidly rising river with that chilling mixture hardy fishers know as ‘grue’.

Somehow the salmon endured the onslaught, pressing ever closer to the river bed and moving aside only to avoid the rumbling cobbles and smaller pebbles the wrathful current had dashed from their summer resting places. Imperceptibly, as the depression passed over and the glass in the fishing hut rose, the flow began to slacken, and the alerted salmon resumed its upstream journey. It was then that, as if in a dream, he saw the bright flash and felt the pulsation of one of the hatchet fishes he had last seen long ago in the Norwegian Sea. Two sweeps of his broad tail and the prize was his, but with it came a sharp prick and shortly after a strong tug and the unpleasant realization that, for the first time in his life, he was being led captive by powers he did not understand. Bewilderment gave way to panic and a frenzied dash across the river. Briefly, he lay quietly in the lee of a rocky slab. The uncomfortable sensation in his mouth remained but, as he nosed slowly out from behind the rock to make his way upstream, he had the feeling that he had regained the freedom to go where he wanted and had somehow escaped the strange force that had threatened to take that freedom away. It was the resistance he felt as he turned into the main current that reminded him that he was yet a captive. Blinded to all pain by the endorphins released by the adrenal hormones that now programmed his muscular form for ‘fight or flight’, the enraged fish shot to the surface, shaking his great head as he burst out into the soft light of an east coast February. Dash followed dash and long sulking runs, but still the fastening remained until at last the cramping lactic acid that had accumulated in his tired muscles stole the last of his strength and, turning on his side, he felt himself drawn helplessly into the knotless meshes of the ghillie’s waiting net.

Gaffs for landing salmon – cruel relics of the past

‘Fit a gran’ cock fush, Colonel, he most be a’ o’ twenty pun’. Dae ye think we should keep him?’

‘No, Robbie, thirty years ago I would have said yes, but springers like him are all too rare these days and his genes are too valuable to take out of the river.’

The barbless hook fell away easily and, slipping the vanquished hero out of the net, the old ghillie held the gasping fish in the smooth current of the backwater below the fishing hut. The labouring gill covers slowed at last and the salmon righted himself; suddenly he was no longer there but secure under the far bank among the gnarled roots of an alder.

A day and a half later and the last of the lactic acid dispersed as the fish repaid the oxygen debt it had incurred during its long struggle. The levels of the hormones released during the fight were returning slowly to normal, and soon the salmon would be ready to resume the pilgrimage to the spawning fords for which his genes had programmed him. Ahead lay a succession of pools and bankside lies, places of quietness whose shelter could be won only by victory over the white water riffles that connected them. Spates were rare that spring, and by late June all too much of what remained of the flow was going to slake the thirst of the spray irrigators whose arching fountains were the life-blood of the potatoes and sugar beet that carpeted the haugh land with their moss green shaws. For weeks on end the riffles were impassable to all but the smallest fish but, even in the driest years, a maritime climate cannot be denied. Twice during the holiday months the sky over the Grampian foothills echoed to the rumbling crackle of summer storms and the rains that followed turned riffle to torrent and trickling fall to roaring cataract.

By now the great fish’s sea-soft skin had thickened and toughened as another set of hormones prepared him for the final dash to the spawning fords and the risk of fatal abrasion it entailed. The final gateway to his calf country was a fall that excluded all but the fittest, fish like him being honed by natural selection to arrive in time to take full advantage of the earliest of the autumn water. He was drawn by the roar of the cataract toward the very sump of the fall, and the upthrust of the standing wave below it threw him bodily upward so that he landed among the bubbles and debris that now threatened to scour every scrap of moss from the rocks on either side. Powerful tail strokes drove him on and, for a few seconds, he made progress up the face of the fall. For a moment he was able to stem the flow, but the raw strength of the torrent first barred his way then swept him bodily downstream into the very tail of the pool. There, among a school of his doughty fellows, he recovered his poise and set his face once more toward the irresistible roar ahead. Again and again he leapt and swam, but still his ascent was denied. Then by chance he landed not in the tumbling core of the white water but in the smoother, more streamlined flow to one side. Here, in the boundary layer, he found to his surprise that he could swim faster upstream than the river could force him down; a final triumphant flick of his broad tail took him over the sill and into the pool above. Now at last he was home in the burn where, six long seasons ago, he first saw the soft light of a spring morning in the eastern highlands.

His were not the only eyes that lit on the strangely familiar surroundings. Smaller salmon that had entered the river in the late spring and early summer had caught him up. Most were grilse, fish that had enjoyed little more than a year of sea feeding, and most were cock fish like him. Like him also, their skins had thickened to a leathery toughness and had long ago lost the silvery gleam that had helped to hide them in the surface waters of the Atlantic. The patches of vermilion livery that relieved the greens and browns of his nuptial dress had been released from the fat store he had been living on since his long fast began many months before. Now the bright carotenoid pigments, which were derived from his marine prey, served to make him more threateningly conspicuous. A tartan tunic was not his only martial feature. As his skin thickened so did the size of his adipose dorsal fin to create a flag at the wrist of his tail that strikingly proclaimed his maleness. Most impressively of all, the finely wrought jaws that once plucked krill and small fishes from subarctic seas were now greatly elongated and so hooked into a gigantic kype that they could no longer fully close. Now at last he was ready to fight for the favours of the hen fish upstream, the first of which were twisting onto their sides to cut the depressions in the gravel, the redds, into which their precious eggs would shortly be shed.

A Victorian artist’s impression of salmon gathering below a spawning ford

As the hens worked, so minute quantities of ovarian fluid leaked from their vents, pheromone signals to the cock fish that the most important days of their lives were at hand. Gleaming softly with a hint of magenta, the hens had no need of oversized adipose dorsal fins or grossly projected jaws; neither were their skins decorated with the carotenoid pigment that had once reddened their flesh but now was redeposited in the rich yolk of the eggs. ‘Cutting’ a redd is something of a misnomer. ‘Lifting’ the fist-sized gravel with her tail flukes is what the hen fish really does when turned on her side. The upstroke of the tail reduces the pressure above the gravel so that it clears the river bed and the downstroke works with the flow of the river to push the gravel downstream. Every so often a hen tested the depth of her work by pressing the tip of her anal fin into the bottom of the redd. To the shadowing cock salmon, already lifted by her beguiling scent to a high state of arousal, this finny probing could so easily tip over into the spawning act itself and he responded by drawing close alongside. Shaken from nose to tail by waves of muscular contraction, his vibrating body drove shuddering pulses of infra-sound into the short space now separating the turgid bodies of the great fish. But it was not yet time and his watery foreplay was not matched by similar contractions by the hen.

Sea-run cock and hen salmon at spawning time

Temporarily distracted by his rough wooing, he did not at first notice the sidling approach of another cock fish almost as formidable as himself, but the instant he did so, he charged his rival with pitiless ferocity, his great kyped mouth wide open in slashing assault. Only the victim’s toughened skin saved him from a life-threatening wound as he made good his escape among the roots of a bankside alder. Lesser fish, mere grilse that had enjoyed little more than a year of sea feeding, also challenged but were as easily intimidated into downstream retreat. Curiously, the great cock fish’s real rivals made no attempt to challenge him. How could they, for most were but six inches long and weighed but a couple of ounces to his twenty pounds? Their strength lay not in their size but in their numbers and the concentrated potency of the sperm now swelling their tightening bellies. Good early feeding in the river and an innate tendency to become sexually mature while still at the parr stage had given these little fishes a first opportunity to pass on their genes without running the dread gauntlet of predation at sea. Like the sea-run males, the mature parr had also caught the ovarian scent and were now crowding round the vent of the cutting hen. Now and again her mighty paramour snapped at the crowd of upstarts and one of them, bolder than the rest, paid the price in a terrible wound, one that would become mortally infected as his sex hormone-weakened immune system was overcome by the ubiquitous bacteria infesting the spawning ford.

Another deep probe by the cutting hen and at last the cock’s close shuddering brought both to open-mouthed orgasm. As the stream of apricot-tinted eggs poured from her vent into the very depths of the redd, so his spurting milt clouded the water above them. Some of his spermatozoa would find their mark in the micropyles of the eggs, but his were not the only male gametes to achieve fertilization. Deep in the redd, where nearly half the ova jostled, the parrs’ concentrated ejaculate ensured that few went unfertilized. Not all the eggs found safe haven at the bottom of the redd. A few swirled about the rim of the depression, and some were swept out of it altogether where hungry parr, some already spent, snapped them up and in so doing helped replenish the energy reserves their frenzied lovemaking had drained from them. The best of them would recover sufficiently to join the smolt run the following spring; the remainder were fated to spend another hazardous year in the river, some to die of post-spawning infections, some to die in the jaws of predators, a few to spawn again as parr and fewer still to achieve smolthood and the dangerous freedom of the seas.

Salmon ova at the eyed stage

In the meantime, a succession of pulsing strokes of the hen’s broad tail as she moved upstream covered the eggs in a pocket where most would sleep safely until the spring, the magic of embryonic development meanwhile transforming them into another generation of Atlantic salmon. So the gallant hen continued until her last pocket was completed. It was now time for her to leave, to let the tumbling stream carry her exhausted body out of the shallow burn and into the deeper security of the river. There, under the bank of an upper pool, her wasted muscles were just able to stem the flow. It was a time not of real rest but at least of respite, a time for her immune system to recover a little of its former germ-killing power and so allow her abrasions to heal. A winter spate swept her down to the lower river where again she sought shelter under a friendly bank.

She was desperately thin by now, yet her lithe body had begun to silver. A ‘well-mended kelt’ at last, her body shone with an almost unnatural gleam, a chrome-plated brilliance that would have done credit to a fifties Cadillac, so different from the tight-skinned bar of silver that had left the sea all those months before. Came the spring and the first of the schools of smolts swept past her. Stirred by endocrine echoes of her own smolthood, she cautiously left her shelter and let the river’s swirling melt water carry her to the head of tide, over a sand sill and into the salty familiarity of the North Sea where a group of baby-faced seals had gathered to make easy prey of her fellow kelts. That she survived this dread onslaught owed as much to chance as to the boom of the netsman’s .270 that temporarily put her would-be killers to flight. Survive, though, she did to rebuild her broken body with the sea’s bounty, one day to return to the burn for a final tryst with new lovers among the rumbling gravel and hissing foam.