Laxey, Isle of Man: I'm lucky to see my first ever wild Atlantic salmon, but it's no fluke that they are present in our rivers
You need a little luck to see some species of wildlife, and fortune was on my side as I peered into the River Laxey on the Isle of Man's east coast. There below me, holding in a pool, was the first wild Atlantic salmon I've ever seen.
At this time of year, salmon run up the Laxey to return to their breeding grounds, and the locals aren't far behind - angling for them and sea trout in the rivers forms part of the government's unseen economy. The thing that I needed to look closely at was the tail: if it was square-cut, the fish was a sea trout, but in this case, the concave fin was conclusive.
The fish and I were in the middle of Laxey village, whose name is derived from the old Norse laxsaa, meaning "salmon river". I may have been there by luck, but the fish was not, thanks to the island's careful management. All wild salmon are under threat, particularly from overfishing at sea, but those in Manx rivers face special dangers.
Further up the river is the Lady Isabella, the world's biggest waterwheel. It was opened in 1854 to help drain a zinc and lead mine, and is a tourist attraction today. The water in the mine remains heavily polluted and a danger to the river, so the piston rod has been disconnected to ensure the laxsaa continues to live up to its name.
Not only that, the salmon's progress is aided by a much-needed flood-prevention scheme. Previous structures could block the salmon's path for weeks and collected unhelpful debris. They have been replaced by boulder weirs, effectively forming salmon slaloms, allowing the fish to swim around them with ease.
Numbers have been helped by a breeding programme at a Manx government facility, which previously only bred rainbow trout for release into the island's reservoirs. Wild salmon are gathered from the rivers and stripped of eggs and sperm to produce fertile eggs. The adults are returned to the rivers they came from and the eggs reared until the fry are released after three to four months into the same rivers, to ensure that any genetic differences between salmon in the various rivers is preserved. The results of all this work speak for themselves.