Jim Murray: Artist, River Man, Actor, and Founder of the podcast @thelastsalmon – the inspiration behind Project White Hart

What image does a salmon conjure in your mind?

How do we persuade people to fall in love with fish — those silver, slippery creatures from an underwater world we barely notice?
Don’t just look at water; look into it. Every river, every bridge, every footpath is an invitation to pause and peer beneath the surface. There is another world there, struggle, and mystery.

And yet, some will still shrug and say: “But it’s only a fish.”

We measure fish in tonnes, not individuals, yet we count cattle by heads, the same with sheep, and pigs. They all have heads, even fish have heads, but we measure them by weight – a crude biomass, just a commodity to be exploited, a factory thing.

Now we love animals, but in our emotional hierarchy, we struggle to count fish as animals. They occupy the neglected corner. “Did you know lobsters are sentient beings?” The awkward box. No fur to stroke, no feathers to admire, no arms to hold, no pretend smiles, and no anthropomorphic watchful pools for eyes to invite empathy. Inscrutable aliens, they are dammed. Top of Form

Storytelling with art and literature

The recently turned centurion David Attenborough revealed his top ten favourite books of all time, and one title immediately caught my eye: ‘Wild Animals I Have Known’ by Ernest Thompson Seton.

Partly, I confess, because it is the only one we happen to share on our shelves. But more than that, because of what Attenborough said about it:

“Ernest Thompson Seton was a ranger on the Canadian Prairie and a very competent artist. He drew lots of illustrations of these animals that he knew and there were also – along the outer margins of the text – there were footprints, so you could imagine yourself tracking these things. And the animals were personified to the extent that I could give you their names now.” -DA

This Canadian Prairie ranger knew his subject because he lived alongside it. He observed it deeply, and wrote, as he saw himself, a part of the Prairie itself, part of its nature. People loved his books because the animals were personified, with names and character, but not in a sentimental way; death is never far away.

You find yourself torn: urging the hungry ‘Lobo’, the wolf, to find a meal, while desperately hoping ‘Raggylug’, the cottontail rabbit, might somehow escape.

These animals remained true to their species, yet through the story, they became relatable to us. Ernest Thompson said of his characters: “ The fact that these stories are true is the reason why all are tragic. The life of a wild animal always has a tragic end.

This is why we respect animals, and we must tell their stories

An honour to share one of Sir David Attenborough’s top ten books on my bookshelf

From Wild Animals I Have Known to Black Beauty, The Belstone Fox, and Tarka the Otter onwards, literature has long helped us bridge the divide between human and animal life. Which brings me, inevitably, to ‘Salar the Salmon’ — perhaps the only true great story of this kind centred upon a fish.

An Atlantic Salmon. The leaper.

And maybe that matters more than we realise. Because until we can imagine the life of a fish — not as tonnage, stock, or commodity, but as an individual creature moving through a perilous and ancient world — we will continue to struggle to care whether rivers run through us, or like the salmon treat them as commodities.

Wild Atlantic salmon and farmed Atlantic salmon are different species, and as such, wild stocks cannot simply be restocked; they are a population of wild animals

A salmon has no voice we can pretend to understand. Its world is cold, submerged, largely invisible. Yet its journey is no less epic: born in gravel, carried to sea, hunted from above and below, only to battle its way home against every stone and arrow we have hurled to block its path.

Perhaps that is what stories like Salar the Salmon achieve. They allow us, briefly, to enter the current alongside the fish itself — to see the river alive, upon which every hurt, every abstraction, every dam, and every pollution is a shared hurt.

…and that is why we were in Winchester early May to draw a salmon on the pavement. Not just any salmon, not a lifeless slab of farmed flab, sticking to a supermarket fridge, but a wild Chalkstream Atlantic salmon leaping out of the pavement, forcing the question? What is it? Why is it here?

Inspired by Project White Hart, and created to raise awareness for the few remaining chalkstream salmon of the River Itchen, which flows through the heart of Winchester, the organisations gathered to answer those questions included Jim Murray, the Actor, the Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Wessex Rivers Trust, and the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust.

Together, we explained why the esteemed artist Julian Beever had taken to the pavements of Winchester with coloured chalk and pigment-smudged fingers to create not simply street art, but a vanishing message about a vanishing fish. His challenge was to work the perspective, so that it was only when you looked through the glass lens on a tripod that the salmon appeared to jump out of the street

Julian Beever executing his wonderful street art on a Winchester pavement

How pertinent is that? Drawn in chalk to represent salmon in the chalkstreams — a piece of legalised graffiti, a disappearing message. Then, right on cue at four o’clock, the rain arrived to wash it all away without a trace. Symbolism made visible.

And if we are not very careful — indeed, forceful in our support — that symbolism will become reality.

This is why stories matter so much. Why naming matters, why literature matters, and storytellers

Place identity of Winchester

Winchester Cathedral, once among the richest religious houses in England, was founded by Benedictine monks who observed many fasting days when meat was forbidden. In that world, rivers, fisheries, and fishponds were not luxuries but essential and highly valuable assets. The monks controlled salmon weirs, eel traps, mills, and rights to river harvests along the River Itchen. Indeed, such was the importance of these waters that elements of this cultural heritage still echo in local byelaws and river customs today.

The cathedral itself was built so close to the water that centuries later it nearly collapsed into the saturated peat beneath its foundations. A shrine, shaped as much by water as an army of stone masons.

Fish — especially salmon — are not some modern conservation add-on to Winchester’s story; they are part of the town’s cultural and ecological identity, and so it felt entirely fitting that we stood just outside the cathedral grounds.

And so, we spoke with the good people of Winchester

One of our first questions came from someone from the Diocese, who asked whether I might speak about salmon in the Church. What an invitation! I have only previously spoken in churches at weddings, christenings, and funerals — yet here was the opportunity to talk about the king of fish: the parish’s salmon, the river’s salmon, creation itself flowing through the heart of Winchester. A sermon of sorts, not constrained by ceremony

The analogies seemed endless. Fish swim deeply through Christian symbolism and scripture, from the ancient ichthys symbol to Peter himself, the fisherman called to shepherd people.

However, most people asked a simple question: What could they do individually and easily to help?

Suggestions revolved around not buying farmed salmon from open-net operations — something I have written about previously — to not letting your dog jump in rivers if it has been recently treated for fleas. This is not something I have covered before, so I will explain it.

The concern is that some flea and tick treatments contain potent insecticides, such as imidacloprid, flumethrin, or fipronil, designed to kill parasites on the animal, but which can persist on the coat, in shed hair, and in wash-off residues.

Once in the water, even very low concentrations may affect aquatic insects and other invertebrates — the foundation of river ecosystems that support the entire food chain, up to birds and fish. In chalkstreams especially, where ecological balance is delicate, these cumulative pressures matter.

It is a reminder that modern environmental impacts are often indirect and unexpected: actions taken at home, with the best intentions for pets, can still have downstream consequences, and this may be a significant but largely overlooked source of pesticide pollution in urban rivers.

This conversation continued with Dr. Danny Chambers (Member of Parliament for Winchester), who came to support the event and, as a practicing vet, is also involved in ongoing work with fellow MPs and environmental campaigners to raise concerns about the impact of veterinary pesticides entering rivers.

Children have a natural curiosity with wildlife, which too often we fail to nurture

So did we raise awareness?

Well, we didn’t stop talking all day, even though some of the listeners weren’t our intended audience in Winchester, as I learned how important tourism is to the town. There were visitors from Chicago, Toronto, Tokyo, Berlin, and Antwerp learning about the town’s salmon! As well as the Hampshire Chronicle, it was reported on BBC South Today and was one of the biggest hits on the Atlantic Salmon Trust, Wessex Rivers Trust, and Hampshire Wildlife Trust social media platforms. Maybe we should extend this event to other towns within the Test and Itchen catchment?

A chalk and salmon thing

BBC South Today, May 04, 2026

Chalkstream salmon have declined to such critical levels that a single major event—such as a severe drought or a pollution spill—could push them beyond recovery. On the River Itchen in 2024, just 187 adult salmon are thought to have returned to spawn, representing only 20% of the river’s conservation limit—the minimum needed to sustain the population. It’s a dangerous downward spiral, and without urgent intervention, the outcome is extinction. The situation on the neighbouring River Test is similarly dire.

Project White Hart’s mission is to foster hope, halt the imminent extinction of the irreplaceable English chalk-stream Atlantic salmon, and put them on a path to sustainable, long-term recovery. Wild Atlantic salmon are one of nature’s great survivors—resilient, adaptable, and capable of bouncing back if given the chance. That means restoring the conditions they need to thrive once more