The genetics question
Four fish, one lough
Lough Melvin holds four distinct salmonid forms found nowhere else: the gillaroo (Salmo stomachius), a bottom-feeding trout with golden flanks and crimson spots whose name comes from the Irish giolla rua, meaning 'red fellow'; the sonaghen (Salmo nigripinnis), a silvery, black-finned trout of deep open water with a fight out of all proportion to its size; the ferox, an ancient subspecies that cannibalises other trout and may have colonised Ireland up to 50,000 years ago; and Gray's charr (Salvelinus grayi), a critically endangered species with a pink-red belly, recorded at only 12 individuals in a 2001 survey. All four are reproductively isolated, homing to separate spawning grounds within the same body of water. The lake is, by any measure, one of the most scientifically important freshwater habitats in Europe.
The disappearing fish
Gray's charr
Gray's charr - also called the Melvin charr or, historically, the freshwater herring - was described formally by the zoologist Albert Günther in 1862 and named after his colleague John Edward Gray. It lives at ten to thirty metres depth, feeds on water fleas, and spawns in shallow rocky areas in November. Recorded numbers: 33 in 1975, 42 in 1986, 12 in 2001. In 2003, a rescue plan to relocate fish to a nearby reservoir failed because, despite extensive searching, no fish could be found at all. The introduction of rudd and roach into the lough, and rising phosphorus from agricultural runoff, are the likely causes of its collapse. It is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN. Whether it still exists is genuinely uncertain.
William III and the map that was never drawn
A garrison on the border
The village's name comes from a military post established here after the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, when William III planted troops along the new order's western edge. Two centuries later, the 1925 Irish Boundary Commission - set up to adjust the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State - recommended that Garrison be transferred south. The Commission's report was suppressed and never enacted; the border stayed exactly where it was, and the village remained in Northern Ireland. The lough it sits on still straddles both jurisdictions. The Fermanagh shore is UK. The Leitrim shore is Ireland. The fish, as noted, are indifferent.
A wedding, a bomb
The Melvin Hotel, January 1972
In January 1972, the Melvin Hotel in Garrison - then owned by the McGovern family - was blown up by the IRA during a Catholic wedding reception. The stated reason was that the hotel had allowed members of the security forces to stay on the premises. No deaths are recorded in the sources. The building is gone. The hotel's name survives in the Melvin Bar and in the lough it overlooked.