There's No Such Thing As a Free Meal
We are constantly being promised a lot for a little, but do we ever get it?
After many years of backlash for the salmons in Danish rivers, they have started to get back, but still not in large amounts.
Sport fishers are of course unhappy about that, and many initiatives have been made during the years to breed more fishes and put them into the rivers, hoping that when they grow up, they’ll return and become great game.
The reasons for the fishes to disappear in the first place were quite simple, and yet, it took many years to convince politicians that it was necessary to do something about it:
The rivers were straightened, to gain more farming land along them, but also resulting in less of everything: plants, frogs, otters, all other animals, insects – and fishes
The sand and growl areas where the salmon used to breed had been removed, to make the rivers deeper and thereby better at leading away the water fast – to avoid the natural floodings in the winter and spring
The increased farming, with all the excessive fertilizer and pesticides spread during the years, had killed most life in the rivers
The ironic part of it was that the new farming land gained was, in general, quite bad for farming. It was just sand, and traditionally, it had been fertilized by the regular floodings that left debris there for the plants to live in, but without the floodings, nothing happened.
It had looked like a free meal to straighten the rivers, but it wasn’t, and in the end, many of them have been changed back again to something that looks like the original shape. And now the fishes are gradually coming back.
But, the good conditions for fishes has had another effect. I suppose that the reduced amount of the fishes that naturally belong there has made it possible, but the politicians and biologists seem to be too busy blaming the Russians to think about that.
All they can see is that the Russian humpback salmon is spreading all over both Norway and Denmark, taking the breeding spaces from the original types of salmon, and being the source of extensive pollution.
The reason for blaming the Russians is that the fish has been released in rivers closer to Scandinavia, even when it didn’t originally live there. And from those rivers, it has spread to Scandinavia.
The reason for the pollution is the special lifecycle of this kind of fish: It is leaving the river during its first year of life, then spending the next year in open sea, and, finally, coming back to the original river to breed – and die.
They all die after breeding.
Again, the sports fishers are unhappy, because the humpie doesn’t taste very good. It is clearly eatable during most of its lifetime, but toward the end, when going for breeding, it develops a rotten taste, so most people prefer not to eat it.
These salmons can always be taken home, and actually, fishermen are urged to kill them and take them home, because the humpbacks are considered an invasive species that, at best, should be removed from Denmark completely.
But as they are uneatable, this gift to the fishers isn’t very much appreciated.
Just like the land gained from straightened rivers weren’t a free meal, the extra fishes from the now again curly rivers aren’t a free meal, either. In fact, not a meal at all.