THERE is hope for Dorset's salmon population following some of the most encouraging figures in years.

The number of young salmon leaving the River Frome this year to migrate to the sea for the first time was the highest in eight years, showing good signs for the species which is threatened worldwide.

Figures released by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) has shown that more than 13,000 smolts - the stage in the salmon lifestyle when it is ready to migrate to the sea – passed the monitoring station in the river this spring. This figure is 40% higher than the 10-year average for the river.

The number of adult salmon returning to the river has been far fewer than expected in recent years, which experts believe may be due to the size of the smolts. The low return rate in 2019 coincided with the smallest smolts ever recorded leaving the river in the previous year.

Conversely the most recent batch of smolts are larger than average, and time will tell whether they will be robust enough to make it to sea and back in good health. Previous research by the GWCT has shown that larger smolts are more than three times more likely to return from the sea than smaller ones.

Rasmus Lauridsen, head of GWCT Fisheries Research, is encouraged by the findings: “It is more than 10 years since we have observed this number of large smolts leave the river and given the relationship between return rate and smolt size I am hopeful that good numbers of adult salmon will return in 2021 and 2022”.

Starting in March each year, fisheries ecologists at East Stoke, near Wareham spend 24 hours a day for six weeks checking the monitoring station in the river. This year’s smolt run came as the UK went into its first national lockdown. Despite the restrictions, the Dorset-based team was one of very few salmon research centres which managed to operate in this period.

For more information, visit www.missingsalmonalliance.org.