Sammy the seal has incurred the wrath of fishermen for allegedly munching his way through salmon stocks in the River Annan, Dumfriesshire. River managers wanted to shoot Sammy but the plan sparked an outcry, and now one of angling’s fiercest arguments — how many fish does a seal eat? — is to be settled by an experiment.
Fishermen have long argued that seals are largely to blame for a lack of salmon and sea trout in Scotland’s rivers and lochs. Now scientists are to tag hundreds of sea trout and check how many are eaten by seals fitted with counting devices. If seals are eating many fish, it would justify a cull. The plan is to release fish into the River Shieldaig in Wester Ross where there is a colony of seals.
The research, costing tens of thousands of pounds, has been paid for by the Atlantic Salmon Trust and the taxpayer.
Scotland’s seal population is booming. The latest estimates put the number of grey seals at 120,000 and the number of common seals at 40,000.