Salmon epic leaps to life

To Sea and Back: The heroic life of the Atlantic Salmon

In telling the story of the salmon from its viewpoint, he has introduced the reader to the various aspects of salmon biology in a narrative form. His description of a large spring salmon making its way back from the sea, being caught and released and eventually surmounting the last big falls finally to arrive at his place of birth almost humanises the fish. The description of spawning is as informative as I have read.

No biology lessons are required before reading this book, Dick just tells the salmon’s story and describes it in detail. For example, he describes the reason for the change in colour of a salmon smolt on entering the sea and why male salmon go red before spawning and how the carotenoids picked up from feeding on crustaceans at sea are taken up by the hen fish’s eggs. Any salmon anglers will find it compulsive reading and will pick up on many aspects of salmon biology. He explains how the guanine crystals in the skin of a salmon smolt are laid down in rows parallel to the light shining down from the surface and thereby act as mirrors that reflect the surrounding blue of the sea and so conceal the smolt from predators approaching from the side. The greenish brown back of the parr is replaced in the smolt by blue so that the fish also appears sea blue to predators looking from above.

His early research into the causes of reduced marine mortality of salmon at sea has been very informative to current research on the subject. Even when he gets sidetracked in such areas as the early history of Victorian voyages to sea, which laid the foundations for modern marine research on salmon, he relates the story in a readable and informative manner.

Stories of his children fishing for small river trout are interspersed with snippets of wisdom on natural selection and why many female brown trout go to sea and become sea trout.

There are interesting insights into the most recent research on salmon feeding at sea and the finding that salmon smolts can navigate very precisely along the continental slope current. He mixes history, salmon biology and natural history into the storyline with great ease and the migration of salmon is intertwined with his own migration to Scotland.

Any angler who has not thought about the full salmon life cycle from egg to smolt, migration to sea, and return to the river may think again before killing this majestic fish.

This book, written in a witty, clear and informative style, is an important read for anglers, natural history students and anyone interested in salmon biology and conservation. Shelton’s ability to present complex aspects of biology and natural history in a clear and simple manner to the reader is key to its success.

- Dr Paddy Gargan is an avid angler and a senior research officer with Inland Fisheries Ireland