To Sea and Back

The Atlantic salmon is an extraordinary, iconic fish. For centuries as object of awe and the frequent recipient of royal protection, it has been valued both as a food source and, now more than ever, a vital indicator of the health of our rivers and seas. But the salmon remains a mysterious creature. Just how does it survive in the very different contexts of fresh and salt water? And how does it navigate thousands of miles to feeding grounds in the northern oceans before returning to the burns of its birth to reproduce?

To Sea and Back is an irresistible combination of story and science, revealing the riverine and marine world from the salmon’s point of view. We explore the various stages of the salmon’s life cycle and place the fish in its proper evolutionary context – one much closer to man than we might imagine. Along the way, we learn about the sterling efforts of the Victorian Frank Buckland, Inspector of Fisheries, to undo the crippling effects of the Industrial Revolution on Britain’s rivers. We meet Archibald Ross, a ghillie on a nineteenth century estate in the Scottish Highlands. We follow the valiant voyage of HMS Challenger in the 1870s, an epic feat of exploration that gave us our first real understanding of the oceans. And we follow the author himself at sea as he hopes to understand some of the abiding enigmas of the salmon’s secret life.

Author Biography

Richard Shelton headed the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory at Pitlochry from 1982 to 2001. He is currently Research Director of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews. He lives in Perthshire with his wife Freda. The Longshoreman was published by Atlantic Books in 2004.