RIVER TORNE DAMAGED SALMON
Warning! This site contains graphic photos of badly damaged salmon of the River Torne, the Swedish-Finnish border river. Most of these damaged salmon were brought alive to the river bank. According to the Finnish Food Agency, the poor condition of these salmon is not caused by disease but by mechanical damage! This is a consequence of the exception in the Common Fisheries Policy which was given to Sweden and Finland. Most of the mechanical damage to salmon is due to the selective fishing with Push Up traps in commercial fishing in the Bothnian Bay of the Baltic Sea.
This one was a beautiful 14 kg female salmon which never could spawn! It was brought to riverbank at alive in Lappea 2016.10.19, about 200 km up from the estuary of the River Torne in Tornio-Haparanda.
The damage which salmon and trouts get from selective fishing does not heal but dilate. Under their migration in river and waiting for spawning the damaged skin will be adhered by water mould and the damage dilate so severe that the fish have no more vitality to spawn.
The situation in the River Torne is much worse than the authorities of commercial fisheries want to admit. While only numbers can be seen in the documents of the authorities, the people at the riverbanks have seen the existence of macabre reality. Mortality of salmon released from the Push Up traps at sea have been much higher in the River Torne than anyone knows. Hundreds are seen, dozens are photographed when weak and dying salmon by thousands drift into the sea within the stream.
The River Torne turned to a stream of death when selective fishing with commercial Push Up traps began in the estuary in 2014. Food authorities of Sweden and Finland wrote 2016 about ”two consecutive years of massive disease and mortality in returning salmon and sea trout in the Torne river.” Nevertheless the selective salmon fishing with Push Up traps has been allowed to continue without anyone interfering with this.
No-one should have the right to practice business in a way that influences any living form like this and, in addition, harms livelihood of other people. Fishing should be practiced on nature's terms, not fisherman's. We do hope that the authorities of DG Mare of European Union will work this out and impose an absolute ban for any selective fishing of salmon and trout and other fishes in commercial fisheris.
A Web site in cooperation with
the Finnish-Swedish
River Torne Organisation
in North Finland and in North Sweden
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