The Atlantic Salmon Trust Annual Review and Auction 2018
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THE ATLANTIC SALMON TRUST ANNUAL REVIEW AND AUCTION 2018 1 THE SPORTING SALE Tuesday 22 May 2018, 11am Edinburgh RICHARD ANSDELL, RA (BRITISH, 1815-1885) The keeper’s pony signed and dated ‘R Ansdell./1869’ (lower right) oil on canvas 137.2 x 76.2cm (54 x 30in). £10,000-15,000* APPOINTMENTS AND ENQUIRIES +44 (0) 131 240 2296 [email protected] bonhams.com/sportingart * For details of the charges payable in addition to the final hammer price, 2 please visit bonhams.com/buyersguide THE ATLANTIC SALMON TRUST ANNUAL REVIEW AND AUCTION 2018 CONTENTS WELCOME 4 PATRON’S SPEECH 6 SYMPOSIUM & GALA DINNER 2017 9 THE CHAIRMAN’S CAST 12 THE MISSING SALMON PROJECT 14 A WORD FROM THE FUNDRAISER 16 LIVE LOTS 1 & 2 17 GOLDEN LOTS 3-6 19 FISHING 24 FISHING ACCESSORIES 51 SPORTING RETREATS 55 SHOOTING AND STALKING 61 ART 63 SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE 64 INFORMATION 69 AUCTION TERMS AND CONDITIONS 70 FINANCIAL REPORT 71 AST RESEARCH MATTERS 72 LIKELY SUSPECTS FRAMEWORK 74 ACOUSTIC TELEMETRY 76 WHO’S WHO 77 3 THE ATLANTIC SALMON TRUST LAUNCH OF ONLINE AUCTION REPORT AND ANNUAL REVIEW MAY 2018 WELCOME ‘Welcome to the Review and Auction Catalogue which covers the 50th year of the Atlantic Salmon Trust. Reaching such a significant milestone encourages one to look at such an Organisation in a more retrospective way and to ask the question: what is it we want to achieve over the next 50 years? I’ve been so impressed with the entire AST team who have thrown themselves at this challenge to make sure that the AST is more relevant than ever before and to focus research towards answering some of the key unknown potential contributors to salmon and smolt mortality. Making such decisions and then successfully following them through is by no means easy. It will require far greater funds than the organisation has ever raised; it means that we will need to become more vocal and involved in some of the more contentious issues surrounding salmon and sea trout survival. However, this is where the fight is and the more we can do to narrow and help frame the debates and arguments, through empirical and impartial research, the more likely we are to find ways to protect and nurture this struggling species. With returning salmon continuing to decline, we can no longer afford to focus on the periphery, but need to wade into the heart of the issues. To everyone reading this, many thanks for your support for the AST. I hope, as I do, that you approve of the direction the organisation is taking and the work it is doing. They’re a fantastic and dedicated team and I really think that the next few years will shed some real light on areas little understood but vital in our fight to reduce salmon and smolt mortality.’ Earl Percy President of The Atlantic Salmon Trust 4 THE ATLANTIC SALMON TRUST WELCOME His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales & Earl Percy meet the AST Salmon 5 Patron’s Speech May 27th 2017 Gala Dinner Syon Your Majesty, ladies and gentlemen, an important part in the fragile economies of many marginal first of all, I am enormously grateful communities. So when stocks decline there is far more at stake to His Majesty for responding so than a heavenly day’s fishing. That, of course, is why I am so positively to my invitation and pleased and proud to be Patron of the Atlantic Salmon Trust giving up his precious time to be and to have been so for the past thirty-three years of its fifty with us on this important occasion. years existence. Now, I well recall visiting Norway As many of you may recall, the Trust was formed in 1967 forty-seven years ago and having against a depressing backdrop of rampant salmon disease and a brief opportunity in-between an increasingly difficult situation in relation to netting off the engagements to cast a fly in the Greenland and Faroese coasts. The founders of the Trust were river Rauma where, of course, I was very clear that, without objective science, management could regaled by old fishing stories about my great grandfather, not tackle these very difficult and seemingly intractable issues. King George V, who had inevitably caught a forty or fifty That was a far-sighted approach and as important now as it pounder in precisely the place where I was fishing! Rather was then, even though the problems are rather different. ignominiously, and in absolute accordance with the operation Within ten years of the establishment of the Atlantic Salmon of Murphy’s Law, I ended up catching a four pound grilse – Trust, salmon disease was on the wane and the problems in but ladies and gentlemen, I think that was at the time when relation to the major high seas fisheries had been greatly Norwegian rivers had been struck so badly by the dreaded reduced, with only a fraction of the original prodigious catches Salmon disease, so perhaps it was an excuse. being taken. Having started fishing for Salmon at the age of seven in 1955, The expectation was that, with these problems under control, when the rivers were crammed with fish and the seasons Atlantic salmon stocks would rebound and rebound quickly. were in their proper places, I have never really wanted to However, this simply did not happen, and within a few years fish for anything else and over the years my fascination has it became clear that Man’s influence on the life cycle of the extended to wanting to know much more about this most salmon was much more profound. enigmatic and noble of species. In particular, I have come Well, our greatest concern today is the very small proportion to appreciate the sheer vulnerability of this once abundant of salmon smolts leaving their rivers which return as adult natural resource. Now, as you all know as well as me, there salmon. Thirty years ago, up to one in four would make it are so many threats that lie in wait at various stages of the back. Today, it is only one in twenty. Yet we do not know why salmon’s extraordinary life cycle. Yet at the same time it plays this is happening. And until we do, we will not be able to put 6 THE ATLANTIC SALMON TRUST PATRON’S SPEECH solutions in place. And until we have solutions, stocks will the whole of the salmon’s journey from head water through continue to decline. its epic ocean migration and back to its river of origin. In this Back in 1967, the year the Trust was founded, the catch of evening’s programme you can read about the three core salmon from the Dee in Aberdeenshire, for example, was salmon projects – acoustic tracking; D.N.A. chemical tracking almost 8,000, of which around three quarters were Spring and working collaboratively with the aquaculture industry and fish. Last year the total catch was less than 4,000, of which other wild fish colleagues to reduce the impact of net cage only one quarter were Spring fish. As it happens, I remember aquaculture on wild salmonids. They give an excellent insight the Dee in 1967 and the contrast with today was even starker into the Trust’s scientific work and the sophisticated methods than those figures suggest – especially in the upper reaches of they are using to establish the facts about what is going on. the Dee at Balmoral. At today’s symposium it was agreed that the key to Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot continue to lose ninety-five understanding why less than five per cent of smolts which per cent of our salmon on their epic journey to and from our leave our rivers are returning is not only to understand where rivers. It is quite simply unsustainable. So we urgently need to they are going, but to evaluate using current data where they know just what is happening to them along the way. are dying, and why. The Atlantic Salmon Trust is tackling this problem with its The last decade of research has revealed a range of likely unique blend of science generated through its access to factors that may be impacting on migrating smolts and senior scientists across Britain and Ireland, a strong executive post-smolts. Some of these at least are amenable to direct team and knowledge derived from those who own, manage management actions. And they include river barriers, river and fish rivers. The Trust’s current work is geared towards flows, predation, aquaculture and by-catch on the high seas. understanding and solving some of the issues faced by our The Trust, with its partners around the Atlantic, is building migrating smolts and post-smolts. Its science strategy covers a mathematical model which will identify the relative THE ATLANTIC SALMON TRUST PATRON’S SPEECH 7 importance of these key suspects which may be affecting In commending the work of the Trust to you, I do just want our salmon and seek to provide management solutions to to welcome George Percy, Robbie Douglas Miller and Sarah the problem. Bayley Slater to their new roles and hope you will give them One of the most important factors to take into your full and enthusiastic support. Their predecessors have consideration when assessing the range of pressures facing given us much to build on and emulate, not least the drive, wild salmon stocks is Climate Change. Whilst the impacts leadership and huge generosity of the much-much-missed, of Climate Change, now and in the future, on salmon late Duke of Westminster.