Should WDFW be taking DNA material from wild steelhead right now for future "cloning"? If wild stocks of steelhead becomes extinct, would it not be wise to have "cloning material" on hand to bring back that same specie?

I known that cloning has not yet been totally successful as of yet, but it's just around the corner and a matter of time before it is perfected.

What do you think?

What would be the pro and cons of doing this now?

Cowlitzfisherman

I guess if you talking about saving genetic samples of particular runs of steelhead or salmon that are purely native to that stream or river that would be a great idea but better hurry there is not many left

ROTFLMAO!! Cowfish, you just love stirring it up, eh?

My answer is a resounding YES! And Why wait? Do the cloning now!! Just think of the possibilities.....no more hatchery/wild discussions....no Indian net problems....no bait and double hook problems......what WOULD we do?

Oh yes, no need for limits or game wardens, either!!

Maybe we could clone a few extra fisherman, so there could be a Fun5Acres or a Cowlitzfisherman at each river, what about that?

Sorry, just havin' fun....

CFM,

Thought provoking as always. But, at the risk of sounding impertinent, isn't a hatchery fish a "cloned" wild fish by nature? And isn't one of the major concerns touted these days that "cloning" has in fact been too successful, to the detriment of wild stocks and to the vigor of the species. If this is not the kind of "cloning" you refer to, how would asexual propagation (true cloning) help preserve the diversity and vigor of an entire wild gene pool. To be practical: which one lucky "wild" fish would be selected, and who would choose it, and how could that one fish possibly embody all that is unique and special about each of the individual wild fish in a particular river on any given year. This is the fundamental problem and why each wild fish is special and cannot be "cloned". The moment they are cloned they are no longer wild. Unless of course you figure, as some do, that any fish, whether artificially bred or not, that lives in the wild and survives in the wild is in fact a wild fish. But that's a subject for another day. One thing is sure, today there are no easy answers. Habitat and resource protection and enhancement look like our most promising, albeit limited, options going forward. Your ideas are always interesting. Keep on pluggin' CFM and dont let the details get you down.

Interesting..............

Clones aren't offspring, they are exact genetic replicas.........so, no, hatchery fish are nothing like clones.

That being said.......genetics is only about half of what makes an individual. The environment you live in makes up the rest.

People need to realize that cloning Adolph Hitler doesn't get you another Adolph Hitler. It gets you a being with the exact genetic makeup as AH, nothing more. If you've ever met identical twins before, you know they aren't the same person........similar, yes, but not the same. The same goes for clones.

Good subject to think about, though, cowfish. I'm sure you'll hear more about it as cloning becomes more commonplace.

Clone the big ones and clone many

I'm with you Dan. But how is an exact genetic replica going to be better or different than the "cookie cutter" brats everyone is knocking, both figuretively and literally?

Lead Thrower, down here on "the farm" the way we get more, bigger and fatter sheep and goats is to cull the ones that don't make the cut. But to me what works on the farm may not be right for the wild, because essentially farming and culling are about domestication not "wildness". They both have there place, but they are not always compatible. You can get more and/or bigger fish but with consequenses to the wild fish, maybe favorable, maybe not so favorable. Kamloops trout story is only one example. Question is: if we really want wild fish are we willing to let them be wild and take them as they come? Big or little, many or few, healthy or weak? I just think that most people are under the false notion that if stocks were all wild, the steelhead would all be bigger and there would be way more of them. You are far more honest and you hit much closer to home than many would care to admit.

Cowfish,
By the way, when I mentioned "protecting and enhancing" earlier I failed to mention that the thing you and your buddies did down there on the Cow was standup. That is putting your money where your mouth is. Right on.

I don't know if they need to extract DNA now, but I think they should be keeping some frozen specimens. If not cloning, science may benefit from a history of the genetic evolution of our wild fish stocks. I think they've already done some work on this front.

Cloning is interesting but I think the thing that concerns me about it is this...

The thing that makes a species like steelhead so hearty is genetic diversity. Wouldn't cloning steelhead, and their subsequent introduction into the wild, diminish genetic diversity??

Now, if you are a talking a DNA library, where you take genetic material from every available fish and archive it according to system...I'm interested.

I see it mainly as an 'all else has failed' measure...I would certainly disapprove of introduction of cloned steelhead into a river with healthy wild populations...

DanS makes a good point...for example, human clones have existed forever and walk among us every day. Ever known a set of identical twins? Each a perfect genetic copy of the other and yet somehow retain a uniqueness and individuality in spite of their DNA... (edit: next time I'll read your whole post Dan )

Good topic Cowfish....didn't we discuss this a little last year?

NO ABSOLUTLEY NOT!!!!!!

Any effort that pulls the money and focus on wild fish in wild habitat is absolutely No good at all.

Cloning= hatcheries.. NO MORE HATCHERYS!!!!!!! Thats already where the vast majority of the WDFW budget goes No more money for hatcheries PERIOD!!!

Aside from the money issues

1. you'd have to take genetic samples from as many specimins as possible. WDFW has mega mortality problems when they handle fish so I want them to leave fish alone let alone handle as many as possible.
2. you still have to raise the offspring( most likely in a hatchery) Thet will lead to the genetic selection of offspring that are adapted to survival in the hatchery enviroment. Do this for a few years and you have exactly what we have now Steelhead that have been genetically changed from the origional through the cumulative effects of deletrious alleles. ( loss of diversity) and the subsequent lack of ability to reproduce in the wild.. This is the same problem they have with The captive breeding process. No matter what you do or where you start from you cannot get rid of the hatchery enviroments selection of individuals best suited for life in a hatchery..

Some people may not like it but the ONLY way we will save wild steelhead is through 1. protecting their habitat and 2 NOT HARVESTING THEM!!!! Thats it,, no short cuts, no middle ground either we save them or we don't Period thats it and there ain't no more..

Thanks all!

Robert Allen3: It's to early in this tread to make such statements; please let people think of the pro and cons! Then you can make your judgments…fair enough?

I am not saying that we should clone wild steelhead, but "what if" all else and all other efforts fail? Could we not then hatch out the fry form these genetic clones and put them back in the same river system that their parents had come from? I would not support raising them to smolts. Would they not have to still go through same stages of adapting to their ecological systems as there parents did? If they were tuff like their parents, they would survive, if not they would just become crawdad food!

How would you be completing with other "wild" fish if they were already gone?

I would be opposed to cloning steelhead and dumping them into rivers systems in which they were not native to, but what is wrong with dumping cloned genetic fry into the same river system that their parents had came from?

There are a lot of good comments coming in, and this time no one is mad at each other (yet).

Lets just keep hearing everyone's opinion on this issue…it sure can't hurt to be prepared for the worse!


Cowlitzfisherman

RA3 - I know how you feel and I happen to agree with you, but Cow here wants to take us down the road a see where it goes. Come to think of it my neighbors cow is always doing that. Anyway, I don't really see your point CowMan for the reason you state:

Case in point:

Mt. St Helens explodes.
Toutle River is "nuked", a veritable fish wasteland.
River left alone, you know, returned to nature.
Forward a few years later. Habit improves.
Voila, "wild" steelhead return.
Daily News - Steelhead miraculously return to Toutle.
WDFW - Toutle open to fishing, but be nice to nates.

Thing is, without mans meddling with the fish or its habitat these "wild" fish are amazingly resilient. And I think that what RA3 is pointing out is if we would just respect the fish and its habitat there would be no need to clone for future generations. The fish do very well on their own given the opportunity (good habitat) and would only benefit further from our protection.

But running with your "end of world" scenario, maybe we should have kept some of Elvis's DNA in case something happens to us. Never mind we've still got Michael J.

Cow, can't believe I've wayed in on this one 3 times already. But then you dropped the "pie" and I had to run with it.

You know, I can't count the times that I have read on this board the term "lets used the best possible science available" to restore our salmon and steelheads runs.

Now when someone brings up a valid scientific argument about the possibility of cloning steelhead to help them (the fish) from possibly becoming extinct, everyone who may oppose it starts chiming in with the old "habitat" issues. It appears that some people still believe that somehow, someplace, somewhere, someone one is going to work a miracle and "recreate" enough new habitats that will once again allow and support self-sustaining numbers of wild natural steelhead and salmon in our rivers. There may be a "few" such places that may be left, but they are far and few between.

Look around guys; it's going in the "other direction" and it is not turning around! Sure I believe in saving what we got left, but then again I, like you, are in the minority. So do we just sit around crying about it, or do want to apply science to help us? You know, dinosaurs were here once too, and if I recall the last time I looked, they are no longer here. They had all the habitat in the world, and mankind really wasn't that big of a threat to them…Yet they too are now gone!

The population of mankind keeps growing by leaps and bounds, the pollution from his growth probably doubles each year, and we think "habitat" will be the cure-all to save our fish. You can have the best "habitat" in the world at the headwaters of our rivers and you will most likely not have "healthy" runs of fish, if they are being forced to live and swim through our "sespools" that we have now created.

It's my opinion, fish need a whole lot more then just habitat to survive over the "long term" of their life cycle. We may now be seeing the begging of our newest "dinosaurs" if we don't use all the science that is available to us now. It would be stupid and irresponsible for us to continue to believe and tell ourselves that "habitat" is going to be the fish's only savior. I just can't understand why the "habitat" guys keep refusing to develop a scientific "backup" plan that will at lease give the fish an option if the "habitat dreams" become a "habitat nightmare"!

If you're going to criticize the ideal of developing a sound scientific alternative such as cloning, then use science to do it. The cloning process should not be dumped into the same barrel and mixed up with current "hatchery" problem that we now experience. I for one will keep my mind open on this until I see the science that shows it will not be a feasible alterative.

Sorry habitat guys, I'll wait until I can see the "whole picture" and just not one side of it. Show me the science that supports your reasoning why shouldn't we be developing a back up plan right now? What's there to be afraid of by doing so?

"Only a fool would put all of his eggs into one basket" This is a perfect example of doing just that. Smart people think ahead…doom people just scratch their heads and wonder what just happen!

I'm all ears guys…give us your "options" or your "back up" plan!


Cowlitzfisherman

At this stage of the game cloning has a long, long way to go before it becomes "the best available science"...until the main stumbling block, genetic diversity, is overcome its just a flat bad idea.

Methinks CF may have Raellian blood....

The argument for habitat restoration and protection is obvious, cowfish. Even cloned fish can't flourish in degraded habitat because they would be, after all, only steelhead......not super-steelhead. Besides, it isn't only steelhead that most of us are interested in preserving......it's the whole ecosystem that supports steelhead, salmon, trout, etc. that we'd like our kids and grandkids to enjoy.

That being said, it might not be a bad idea to collect samples of wild fish throughout the state and preserve them. I sure wish somebody had tissue samples from the great Elwha kings. Perhaps they could be restored using cloning technology. It sure wouldn't hurt to have samples on hand.

Still, if the habitat, ocean conditions, and our own greedy behavior ever get bad enough that we HAVE TO clone steelhead to keep them going......I get the feeling that steelhead will be the least of our concerns.

But, speaking of cloning.........wouldn't it be funny if "cookie cutters" became a term used to describe 25 lb'ers?

I still think cloning is a great Idea. At least collect the samples now.

As far as habitat goes, fish need it yes, but besides the loss of it (I.E DAMS) I dont believe Its one of the main contributing factors in the decline of the salmon and steelhead. I have silvers running in a small ditch along the road and the water is anything but clean and there is not the right size gravel in it Yet fish run it every year. There is also a simular case in silverdale a city creek that barely runs year round (its a trickle in the summer) it gets plenty of fish.

Cowlitzfisherman -
The genetic diversity we find in wild steelhead is the direct result of the diverse habitats in which they live. As we simplify habitats we are simplifying the fish. It would not be of much value other than to document what has been lost to have samples from diverse populations if there aren't diverse habitats in which they can exist and habitats that continue the selection process of natural selection.

Our anadromous salmonids, including steelhead evolved over 10.000s of years in very dynamic river systems. Over the last 150 years we as a society have done our best to make our systems as static as possible. The Cowltiz downstream of the dams is an obivious example of where all our rivers are headed. If we accepted your position that it is inevitable that is where our rivers are headed then what is the point of preserving the genetic diversity of what was?

If we reduce our rivers to mere ditches in which to transport our fish to and from the hatcheries and the marine waters then diversity isn't needed. Any fish injected in such a system will quickly evolve into just another hatchery fish - that is what is one successful in spawning and rearing in a hatchery and quickly making out to sea and back.

While don't I disagree with your position -in fact it is pretty clear that we as a society put little value on wild steelhead and wild rivers I refuse to give up entirely. By fighting tooth and nail to preserve habitats and slow the rate of their destruction we may be able to prolong the time that wild resources remain in this state and perhaps, just perhaps some future generation will have different values other than fullfilling their immediate needs.

Robert Allen 3-
The collection of genetic material today just requires just a fin clip (a piece smaller than your little fingernail is all that is needed). This can and has been done with live fish with little jeopardy to the fish (other than the capture). Your pessimistic bias towards managment agencies seems to be mis-placed.

Could not agree more than efforts that pull or diverting us from protecting habitats is likely to be counterproductive to maintaining wild salmonids. That is exactly why I have little patience with this continued harping on no killing of wild steelhead and hatchery bashing. While both of those can be of importance and deserve discussion their siginificance pales in comparison to the larger habitat issues. Wild and productive wild populations can and have developed in functioning habitats but without functioning habitats the wild fish and hatchery debates are moot!

If we reduce our steelhead fishing to only environments like the Colwlitz with only hatchery fish (regardless of their genetic makeup) then we have lost much of what makes this part of the world special. If I can't fish in wild dynamic rivers with naturally produced salmonids then I might as well be bass or carp fishing. While I find nearly all forms of fishing enjoyable (there aren't many fishermen any more eclectic as myself) being able to wade a wild river with the potential of connecting with a naturally produced fish is special to me.

Tight lines
Smalma

Very well put, Smalma. Though I love to bring hatchery fish home from time to time, when I daydream of time on the river, I'm dreaming of wild rivers with wild fish in them. Thankfully, there are still some places we can go to experience both forms of fishing. I think some individuals need to give the fish more credit for their ability to survive in the modern world so long as we don't further damage their habitat. The southern Oregon coast, for example, is seeing record numbers of wild steelhead smolts right now.

Smlama

Fair enough!

Smalma you are one of the very few people on this board that hold high respect for. The knowledge that you hold about our fish is not replaceable. But I have to respectfully disagree with you on this issue.

My wife and I have been working all day long in the yard stacking lumber that we had just had milled from a large fir tree that was "after our home"! So please bear with me, if I get a little side tracked or off track. I am really getting tired and I am trying to ask you questions that are not to argumentative.

You say; "The genetic diversity we find in wild steelhead is the direct result of the diverse habitats in which they live."

So be it; but what do we do when those "diverse habitats" are no longer there, or they become even more diminished?

You also say; "As we simplify habitats we are simplifying the fish" I have to disagree again with you, but the "fish" have no choices, but to adapt to what ever habitat that they have available…right? Is that in your mind, enough to keep self sustaining runs going?

For this propose, of debate only; you say "Our anadromous salmonids, including steelhead evolved over 10.000s of years in very dynamic river systems"

Did not other creatures like the dinosaurs do the same thing? Are they not gone now too? Evolving can only go so far some times, and then other factors take their course too.

We are almost at the end now…but you say; "The Cowlitz downstream of the dams is an oblivious example of where all our rivers are headed. If we accepted your position that it is inevitable that is where our rivers are headed then what is the point of preserving the genetic diversity of what was?

Smalma; those are 100% your words, not my words! But now that you have said it, let's take it to the next step! Tell us, in your opinion, why are we headed this way?

You say; "While don't I disagree with your position -in fact it is pretty clear that we as a society put little value on wild steelhead and wild rivers I refuse to give up entirely"

Smalma, I respect you for your stand, and you should never give it up!

I agree with you that we should continue to fight tooth and nail to "protect" what little habitat we have left.

Finally, you say; "If I can't fish in wild dynamic rivers with naturally produced salmonids then I might as well be bass or carp fishing. While I find nearly all forms of fishing enjoyable (there aren't many fishermen any more eclectic as myself) being able to wade a wild river with the potential of connecting with a naturally produced fish is special to me.

Very well stated Smalma!

I still respect your opinion better then most. To bad that there aren't more open mined people such as you that cant see both side of the pages!

Cowlitzfisherman

Cloning isn't a bad idea. But just one question.

Would that produce a spawner or would that fish be sterile?