Letter: Fish stock fears

I BELIEVE the new format Marine Scotland has adopted for the presentation of salmon and sea-trout fishery statistics leaves much to be desired (your report, 9 October).

For instance, it is no longer possible to clearly follow the relentless and continuing decline in wild salmonid numbers in the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland, wrought by the impact of factory fish farm sea lice upon wild stocks migrating from and returning to their rivers of origin.

The new format may seem equivocal to some observers, and I include myself in that number. They might conclude, rightly or wrongly, that it could be a questionable attempt by Marine Scotland to disguise from public view the full extent of the catastrophe that these fish farms have visited upon our marine and freshwater environment - and upon the animals and humans who depend upon that environment for their sustenance. How might the public now access the information absent from these fishery statistics?

BRUCE SANDISON

Tongue

by Lairg, Sutherland