According to a British businessman, Jim Ratcliffe, it is likely that the Icelandic salmon will be extinct in the future. He thinks that banning fishing the salmon for a few years might be needed to prevent the stock from dying out, reports Vísir.
Ratcliffe runs the Salmon Conservation Area (SCA) in the northeast Iceland, a project that is designed to support the Icelandic salmon. The SCA organised a seminar that took place yesterday, where the latest research data of wild salmon stock was reviewed.
The data shows little to no good news. According to Ratcliffe, there is no doubt that the North Atlantic salmon is on the road to extinction.
“If you look at what has been happening over the last 50 years, the stock has declined by 75%. If you look at it over the last 100 or 200 years, it has probably declined by 90 or 95%”, he says.
Ratcliffe thinks that the government needs to take action. He proposes that the “catch and release” method must be legislated, and the fishing season should be shortened or even banned for a few years.
He isn’t optimistic that the trend can be reversed: “I’m not confident about that at all, because all the news we see at the moment is bad news.”
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