THE sea-run Atlantic salmon is an extraordinary fish. Large and classically proportioned, during its relatively short life it bestrides the two very different worlds of fresh and salt water. Its migrations far into northern seas to grow and subsequent return to its place of birth to breed are nothing less than heroic, and that return, with its dramatic leaps at falls, offers a wildlife spectacle no other fish can match. Its presence – or its absence – is a vital indicator of the relative health of our rivers and seas. Over the millennia, it has accrued totemic as well as culinary importance to the societies that caught it and for most of the last one it has enjoyed the conservation benefits of laws carefully drafted to protect it. Down the long years, the ancient statutes and their successors kept the great fish safe until, over little more than two centuries, first the rivers and estuaries and finally even the seas themselves, fell foul of industrial man’s capacity to plunder the priceless resources he had inherited. For the first time in its long evolutionary history, the survival of the Atlantic salmon as a species can no longer be taken for granted. Many populations have been lost or put at risk, but the enduring power of this remarkable fish to capture the imagination of naturalists and sportsmen has so far proved a sure shield against its extinction.