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Salmo salar, the Atlantic salmon, is a most remarkable fish. Having gone to sea, where it has to run the gauntlet of modern deep-sea trawlers, it returns, a year or up to three years later, to the river of its birth to spawn. On the way it may fall prey to seals, to estuarial nets and to disease emanating from salmon farms. Once in the river it may have to leap up and over waterfalls (‘salar’ means the leaper) as it swims upstream, eating nothing until, having spawned, it dies in the river or returns to the sea. In this final phase of its life it is known as a kelt.

There has been a worrying dearth of wild Scottish salmon, though some improvement was seen last year in the east coast rivers, following a reduction in drift-netting offshore. The major problem, at least on the west coast of Scotland, has been attributable to salmon farms, which are liable to pollute the surrounding waters, with chemicals used to control parasites and disease, with waste and uneaten food. The wild stock may also be affected by disease spread by farmed fish that have escaped.

However, things are looking up. Some salmon farms have been forced out of business by competition from Norway, and an increasing number of farms now have their pens sited further out to sea — particularly off the Orkneys and Shetlands —where the water is clean, currents will spread the wastes, the fish will be healthier and may not need to be given chemical additives. Such fish may be given the oxymoronic description of ‘farmed wild’, or ‘organic’, a much-abused term which some suppliers insist allows them to add ‘natural chemicals’ to a fish’s diet.