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When first I lived in the Western Isles, from 1993, it was in a little village called Maraig.
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it → publish → village
By an inlet of Loch Seaforth, at the bottom of North Harris mountains where the eagles reigned.
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eagles → reign → mountains
Most of my neighbours seemed to be called Donald Morrison and life revolved around sheep.
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life → seem → sheep
But Maraig had a fish farm.
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Maraig → have → farm
A shore station with a shed and slipway, from which an aluminium VBoat whizzed back and fore with merry lads.
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VBoat → whiz → lads
When the wind was right, I could hear their laughter.
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I → hear → laughter
And I knew when the maturing salmon were being fed, from the swish of scattered pellets to the happy fish at that moment thrashing in the water for luncheon.
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salmon → know → luncheon
That Western Isles Seafood Company outpost brought jobs to the community, dignity for young men, life to the township – and fattened a seriously good product.
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outpost → bring → product
You’d struggle, in its heyday, to tell a perfectly poached Maraig salmon steak from any wild cousin hauled from an island river, courtesy of a perfectly cast fly.
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You → struggle → fly
And now an industry they describe as ‘industrially farmed salmon’ is, thanks to a well-heeled campaign by a venture called Project Slingshot, being defamed wholesale in London.
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they → describe → London
There are hideous posters on the London Underground; a class-war film – toff in striped blazer, bow-tie and straw boater, enjoying an Edwardian picnic – strives to go viral on social media.
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film → be → media
A ferry sails past sea cages from a salmon farm in the Shetlands
A poster in the London Underground as part of Project Slingshot's campaign against farmed salmon
They are pressing M&S in particular to stop selling farmed salmon.
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They → sail → salmon
‘The campaign’s posters are deliberately grisly,’ pants a London paper.
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paper → pant → ?
‘One depicts a salmon affected by sea lice beneath the slogan: “We only get what the lice don’t eat.”
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lice → depict → what
Others take aim at chemicals used to treat parasites and disease, and astaxanthin, the pigment added to farmed salmon feed that gives the flesh its familiar pink colour…’
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that → take → colour
Chris Packham and George Monbiot are central to Project Slingshot, because of course they are – not to mention Matthew Glover, founder of Veg Capital and co-founder of Veganuary.
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they → mention → Veganuary
Unlikely to stop till we have nothing left to eat but beansprouts and tofu.
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we → stop → beansprouts
Earlier Project Slingshot campaigns targeted ‘Frankenchicken’ – hot-housed chooks for the table so plump that, allegedly, their legs could not support them – and the gassing of pigs with CO2.
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legs → target → CO2
The other week a gaggle of Michelin-starred chefs signed a sententious letter declaring they had banned ocean-farmed salmon from their menus.
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they → star → menus
Save for Angela Hartnett, I’d never heard of any of them.
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I → hear → them
The ‘silver tourist’ has been prized for as long as anyone can remember.
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anyone → prize → ?
Roman soldiers, enchanted by the sight of him springing up waterfalls, immediately gave him a name: Salmo, ‘The Leaper’.
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him → enchant → name
Cooked as simply as possible – poach daintily, briefly in plain well-salted water and leave the pan to cool overnight – it is the most delicious fish.
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it → cook → pan
These days an affordable protein, when meat has become dreadfully expensive, and long associated in Gaelic lore with wisdom, endurance and the cycle of life.
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meat → become → life
Salmon will go to sea and voyage far from the river of their birth, as far as the chill Arctic – but, in a year or two, they will fight their way back to their native stream to spawn, for spawn they must.
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they → go → stream
Salmon were first commercially farmed in Scotland six decades ago.
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Salmon → farm → Scotland
The first venture was established at Lochailort, between Mallaig and Fort William, in 1965, with – after some trial and error – the first crop making it to market in 1971.
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crop → establish → 1971
The best farmed salmon has beaten wild fish in blind tastings but many persist in damning it as soft, flabby and environmentally ruinous.
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many → farm → it
‘The wild salmon has an instinctive migratory urge which takes it on a sea journey of up to four years and 5,000 miles,’ storms sometime Harris chef-patron Alison Johnson in her rather good 1987 cookbook, Scarista Style.
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Johnson → have → cookbook
‘It is this free-swimming migrating stock which produces the fish crammed lifelong into pens along the Highland coastline.
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which → swim → coastline
For that reason, do not buy farmed salmon any more than you would cage a swallow.’
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you → buy → swallow
The coastal netting stations have all but gone and, in the age of ridiculous catch-and-release, scarce a water in the land now allows you to thump a caught salmon on the head and take it home for dinner.
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you → go → dinner
Salmon farming was never quite the economic miracle for the West Highlands and Hebrides it hoped to be: every other crofter tending his own sea cages.
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crofter → hop → cages
The difficulty is that it takes at least two years – sometimes three – to rear salmon from a wee bit alevin to its eventual date with potatoes and salad.
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it → take → potatoes
A long time without any income whatever and with a high risk of failure, from seal-ripped netting and mass escapes to the infamous summer of 2012, when producers resorted to increasingly desperate use of chemicals amidst a plague of increasingly immune sea lice.
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producers → rip → lice
The early, small producers have all gone and Scotland’s salmon industry today is largely in the hands of Norwegian and Faroese interests.
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industry → go → interests
The Lewis village where I live now happens to have two salmon-processing plants, built in the high days.
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I → live → days
One has been derelict for many years; the other was mothballed in 2024.
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other → mothball → 2024
The charge sheet centres on three things: that the confined fish are prone to infestation and mutilation; that escapees play havoc as they invade wild systems and interbreed; and that salmon cages are a source of localised pollution and, in particular, have devastated stocks of wild sea trout, who prefer hanging close to their native shoreline to protracted polar expedition.
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who → centre → expedition
The defence would point out, m’lud, that wild salmon numbers have been crashing on Scotland’s East Coast rivers too – on that side of the country, there are no fish farms – and that, this being a commercial enterprise, it is in no salmon farmer’s interests to have sick, gnawed and dying fish.
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it → point → fish
…and 2 more, not listed.
The Aporia
