Nathaniel Reed’s
Acceptance remarks at the Atlantic Salmon
Federation New York Dinner
November 13, 2013
I really don’t know what to say besides:
THANK YOU, ALL OF YOU for being present to support the Atlantic Salmon
Federation!
Would you join me in a toast to Donal
O’Brien? Don and I worked together on
numerous conservation-environmental issues for nearly 40 years as a partnership
of devoted advocates of wise stewardship. Donal, will all miss you!
His son and daughter-in-law Carolyn and Don
Jr. are present this evening and I am confident that Donal’s spirit is here,
right here among us.
All Rise: To Donal with boundless thanks!
Among Don’s many outstanding efforts on
behalf of the Atlantic Salmon Federation was his driving force to select Bill
Taylor to become the Federation’s leader. Bill was best known as the toughest ice hockey
player that did not make the National Hockey League. Donal and the selection team members choose
Bill. Bill was not only a fearless
hockey player, but a passionate fisherman, conservationist and leader. His development into our leader of the
Atlantic Salmon Federation has been remarkable and his influence is still
growing. His ability to work with great
leaders of our organization such as Lucien Rolland, John Houghton, Wilf Carter,
Michael Meighen and Richard Warren is testament to his skills as a hard worker,
a fine communicator and a man of sound decisions.
Bill, I promise you that working with our new
American Co-Chairman, Christopher Buckley, will be easy, as he is an astonishing
able, thoughtful expert on water law and the Endangered Species Act but above
all, he is a superb, caring human being.
Chris is a fine salmon fisherman and an
advocate of the role that the ASF has played in the difficult decisions that
have been made and must be made IF the Atlantic salmon population is to grow,
prosper and be able to increase in numbers.
I cannot begin my short remarks without
thanking the dynamic duo: Paul Fitzgerald and Eric Roberts for the weeks of
work that produced the incredible array of auction items and made all the
arrangements for this beautiful room and delicious food and drink. We all thank you both - boundless thanks!
We should thank every member of the
Leadership Committee. Their generous
donations will fund the vital work of the Federation.
You are looking at the world’s luckiest man!
Besides being married to a supportive wife
who only questions the importance of spending large sums of money to fish,
catch and then release the quarry: whether it be bonefish, permit, snook, trout
or Atlantic salmon, she presented me with three children: Nathaniel Jr., Lia
and Adrian who are present this evening, as is my nephew Joseph Pryor. Wonderful!
Besides being my offspring, they are among
the closest friends and my most successful critics that I can count on. My love and admiration of them is
boundless.
I owe thanks to Dan Lufkin, who invited me to
join the Whale River Salmon Club and for 25 years provided wings to make the
long trip to Kuujuac possible. What
years we had! Not only superb salmon
fishing on one of the great wilderness rivers in the world, but the joy of life
friendships with the likes of Bill Mapel, John Scully, Henry Armstrong, Hobie
Claiborne, Jacque Robinson, brother Samuel Reed and an annual cast of characters.
Dan, I am forever in your debt as a friend
and as a fellow ‘earth steward’. Donations
by you and through the Sharp Foundation bought the ASF time to work with the
Greenlanders to dramatically reduce their catch and allowed thousands of salmon
to make it back to their North American natal rivers to reproduce and give
anglers opportunities that were nearly lost.
I must add a word of thanks to Mary Barley
and Paul Tudor Jones, the founders of the Everglades Foundation who are here. They are my compatriots and leaders in one of
the most difficult assignments ever attempted: the restoration of the vast
everglades ecosystem that has been severely damaged by avarice, greed and
incredible errors by the Corps of Engineers.
We are now attempting restoration of a battered ecosystem. They both have been invaluable donors and
supporters of the ASF.
Mark Birkbeck – master of the House of Bruar,
the second most important tourist attraction in Scotland, has flown over to join us – Mark, you are the greatest!
My memory is faltering, but I distinctly
remember seeing my first Atlantic salmon!
It was in mid-June, probably 1939 or 1940. A beautifully made wooden box arrived by Railroad
Express at the back door of our Greenwich, Connecticut, home. It had ‘curious’ holes in the top of the box
and it leaked ice cold water. My father
took a small crow bar and opened the box. There wrapped in a bed of ferns, iced
cold, was a 25 pound cock Atlantic salmon sent by one of the family’s greatest friends, Sherburne Prescott, from
the Restigouche Club’s waters.
I stroked its silver side, felt its muscles,
examined its body head to tail and was captured by this magnificent fish
forever.
20 years later, I was a guest of “Uncle Sherb”
Prescott at the Restigouche Salmon Club.
We enjoyed incredible salmon fishing.
The guides were my instructors – forgiving a “trout strike”, amazed by
my 8½ foot Orvis split bamboo rod at a time when the membership were still using
long double handed Leonards’ and Thomas’.
I can never repay him for his guidance and companionship that continued until
his “passing”. I fished at the club for
the next four summers and was hooked for life.
Can you imagine an era when a fresh Atlantic
salmon could be loaded onto trains all over the Gaspe, iced several times by
the train crew before arriving in Montreal and then re-iced and sent to its
destination, being iced all the way, and delivered in three days to any town in
the northeastern states or four days to any place as far as Florida or even
Texas?
Warren Gilker, the manager of the Engelhard Camp
and the former manager of the Restigouche Club remembers stacks of the wooden
boxes filled with salmon wrapped in ferns and iced, sitting at their town’s
railroad stations waiting for the next train.
The boxes were made in the winter. The ice was cut from the frozen
rivers and was stored under sawdust in innumerable ice houses along all the
Gaspe Rivers. What an era; never to be
duplicated.
To the business at hand. What is the future of our sport and the great
fish that we love with a passion?
Thanks to Rick Warren and Andy Goode’s
leadership, the ASF and an associated team of caring organizations have given
the remnant population of Penobscot salmon the ability to reach a meaningful
amount of spawning water by breaching the Great Works and Veazie dams.
Wouldn’t it be a triumph to see the historic
schools of Atlantic salmon returning not only to the Penobscot, but to the
Kennebec and all of the seven Maine salmon rivers -- and I might add, we need a
review of the Green Lake Hatchery Program that produces beautiful parr and
smolts but none of them seem to find a natal river? It’s worth a mighty effort.
One of the Federation’s most significant achievements:
the broad acceptance and practice of Catch and Release has been incredibly
successful.
Personally, I made the transition easily. Although not embarrassed by photographs of
salmon caught and killed, I am now overjoyed to hold a salmon after landing it
and have it leave my hands on its way to its spawning grounds. I always add an admonition: “Find a large mate
and produce thousands of fertile eggs as your reward for tender handling: Go
On, God Bless You!”
Despite our efforts far too many salmon are
killed. The figures are unsettling:
anglers in Canada killed 35,000 grilse and 2,700 large salmon, all of the large
salmon from the Quebec Rivers.
The conclusion of First Nation’s netting at
the mouth of the Grand Cascapedia is an example that should be followed at the
mouth of the Restigouche! It will take a
concerted continuing effort to persuade the tribe to use traps instead of gill
nets so the large female salmon can be released to the river to continue the
prolific Restigouche systems salmon runs.
The Greenland quota has been negotiated to a
comparatively small catch, but it is becoming more difficult to negotiate with
the Greenlanders when they read the NASCO report that anglers killed
extraordinary numbers of large salmon on the Matapedia. That figure stands out like a very sore thumb
in comparison to the successful efforts to voluntarily embrace the catch and
release ethic, now a feature of the other Gaspe Rivers.
Matapedia anglers killed 512 large salmon in
2012 and an astonishing 1,016 in 2011, far too many, and in time unsustainable.
The Gaspe Rivers all show definite signs of
healthy runs of extremely fit salmon that have fed well off the southwest coast
of Greenland and along the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts. The impact of warming is difficult to assess,
but so far the food sources that must be found promptly by migrating smolts
seem not to have been adversely impacted.
Regrettably, the annual report from the North
Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization indicates that the Irish and Scottish
nets kill thousands of wild salmon. Those countries fisheries staffs have not only
permitted the netting but have encouraged large salmon farms to be placed in
the estuaries of some of their once great salmon rivers thus guaranteeing
massive numbers of sea lice will confront hundreds of thousands of departing
smolts, ready to suck the life blood out of them. It is hard to believe but in 2011 and 2012,
the last two years of record, the combined kill by netters off Ireland and
Scotland totaled 58,395 salmon. One
wonders how salmon returning to famous Scottish rivers survive this onslaught.
The Norwegians, considered by the majority of
the world as a land with a social conscience and a leader in environmental
affairs, are the largest villain when it comes to allowing extensive sea and
even fjord netting and permitting salmon farms often at the mouths of their
once highly productive rivers. Their
kill figures are neatly obscured by their reporting to NASCO the tonnage of
salmon killed, not the number of salmon killed.
This is a trick to avoid the truth that thousands of salmon are being
killed in long, well placed nets.
They are destroying their own river’s salmon
stocks and have even taken to intercepting the migrating salmon headed for the
northern Russian salmon rivers.
The figure jumps off the NASCO report: 696
tonnes of salmon killed! That represents
128,000 plus salmon over the same timeframe permitted if not encouraged to be
killed and sold all over Europe.
Over a twelve year period, the Greenlanders
killed 100,000 wild salmon while anglers in Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland,
Scotland and Norge killed 3.3 million salmon.
Our dream that farmed salmon would force a
reduction in netting has not been realized.
Why do wild Atlantic salmon command such a
devoted loyalty when the prices are nearly 50% higher than farmed salmon? Could it be the fear that farmed salmon are
genetically reproduced and have a harmful concentration of chemicals in their
bodies?
I do not know, but I cringe when I visit a
fine American delicatessen and am offered “wild Irish, Scottish or Norwegian
salmon fresh or smoked”. We should seriously
consider supporting a ban on the sale of all “wild Atlantic salmon” -- fresh or
smoked anywhere in North America!
Our friend and great ally, Orri Vigfússon,
the leader of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund has spent the better part of his
lifetime attempting to urge, even beg the countries who flagrantly disregard
the damage that their net men accomplish by killing so many potential spawners.
The three governmental agencies located in
Ireland, Scotland and Norway allow, if not encourage, the scandalous netting of
so many salmon reducing the value of the riverside owners’ leases. They should be ashamed! Their agencies have been infiltrated by the
netters, the salmon farmers and their distributors.
Orri’s recent flash: “for every 1,000 wild
salmon they spare in the Faroese waters, Scottish nets kill 980 of them!” ----- Madness!
Why should any of us care about the gross
mismanagement of Atlantic salmon stocks off the coasts and in the estuaries of
the once great Irish, Scottish, and Norwegian rivers? It is because we are “stewards of the Atlantic
Salmon”. We need to speak out clearly
and forcibly about gross mismanagement anywhere within the Atlantic salmon
range!
We collectively must be constantly aware of
the danger to our prized North American salmon rivers and salmon stocks. Reckless forestry practices, water quality
concerns, disease and new predators in the salmon rivers and their estuaries
are all continuing threats. We must be
prepared to assist Bill and the senior staff of the ASF: Bill Mallory, Andy
Goode, Sue Scott, Kirsten Rouse, Todd Dupuis and my new hero: Jonathon Carr. North American salmon are not immune to the
madness that prevails in Europe.
ASF finally has financed my “dream come true”
– an effective science program that can unravel and potentially solve
unacceptably high losses of smolts as they enter and circulate within the
receiving estuaries before they head to the open sea.
We need to learn far more about the perils
that kelts face, having survived through the winter on body fat. They can “mend”, grow and return as large
salmon ready to deliver sport and spawn once again. They need to be protected, as they are
swimming “Gold Mines of thousands of eggs” for many of our rivers. We need to know the source of the perils they meet
when entering salt water.
This vital scientific effort could be far
better financed if every board member and every guest this evening made an
extra specified donation to the Federation for Jonathon’s extraordinary
research efforts.
Michael Meighen, it is impossible to
adequately thank you for your nine years as the Co-Chair of the Federation. The annual board meeting held in Montreal and
the magnificent new city of Toronto were always special delights to attend. You have been a special joy to work with. The Canadian Board members of the Federation
have been great partners and communicators. We do need more assistance from the Canadian
Government especially in addressing the many serious threats of salmon farming.
But you and you colleagues have highlighted
the need to reexamine ocean salmon farming and the need for continuing
research.
I know you and your Canadian colleagues have
worked diligently to make the name and reputation of the Atlantic Salmon
Federation known by every salmon angler across your great country. Michael and the contingent of Canadian ASF
board members here this evening: we thank each of you for your contributions to
the Federation’s success story and wish you continuing sucesses!
So, my friends, colleagues, avid fellow
salmon fishermen and fisherwomen, thank you for coming to the Annual New York
Dinner. Thank you for your financial
support of the Federation.
Above all, thank you for the honor you have
bestowed on me.
We share a passion for the privilege of
fishing for Salmo Salar. We are
custodians of a great fishing legacy and are modern day stewards of the river
systems that give anglers of all ages, wealth and skills the privilege of
fishing for the “King of Fish”.
God Bless you and again: Tight lines and boundless
thanks!
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The seventh annual Wildlife Conservation Awards Dinner celebrates and honors individuals with a lasting and exceptional commitment to wildlife conservation in the categories of legacy, public service, science, and citizen advocacy. We hope you will join our Board of Directors, honorees and guests for a great evening in support of wildlife.