I guess it all depends on how closely related the male and female are...

I wonder what chance your kids would have if you mated with your sister...

There is a much greater chance of interbreading in fish when you are taking a small sample of the population and mating them, like hatcheries do. I kind of think the reason the hatchery fish are mostly on the small side is due to poor breading practices.

just my opinion.

Yeah.......you get A salmon. So?

If you take Michael Jordan's mom's egg, and his dad's sperm, do you get Michael Jordan every time? Or better yet, if you DO get Michael Jordan, and you raise him up in a concrete box for the first 6 years, do you get an NBA superstar?


The Judge's ruling looks, sadly, to be a literal interpretation of the ESA. Species-wise there is no discernable difference between a hatchery steelhead and a native steelhead. But anybody who isn't a complete cracker knows there IS a difference between them. However, the ESA does not allow for this distinction. You can't really blame the judge.

The stand-up thing to do would be to amend the ESA to acknowledge the difference between a native fish and a hatchery born fish. Otherwise, what's next.........counting net-pen fish as part of the population too? I can see it now.......Puget Sound salmon are no longer endangered, just look at those net-pens teeming with fish! :rolleyes:

But, waiting for the Bush administration to make an amendment to the ESA which actually increases the protections placed on a particlar specie could be a long proposition.

Piper,
Maybe its what your using for bait.I have caught lots of large hatchery fish.Got a 21+ lb hatchery silver hanging on my wall that was caught in marine area 11 afew years ago.

Dont remember saying all hatchery fish were that way??? There are exceptions to every rule... after all, even dwarfs parents can make full size kids...

I was reading some background on this issue today and saw where the scientists said that hatchery fish were larger than their native cousins and therefore were able to outcompete the wild fish for food....Lots of theories flying out there on this one.

Not really my style to post in this fashion, but after reading Plunker's last post, there can only be one conclusion:

Dennis Becklin = SUPREME IDIOT

Did I really say that? Damn, the truth hurts!

Grandpa, I believe that when the hatchery fish are released from the pen into the river they are larger than the natural smolts because they are on a steady diet of pellets in reletively low current ponds, whereas the natural smolts are fending for themselves in the river...

Its when they return that the difference is pretty clear... How many bogy brats are over 6 lbs?

I'm shocked and disgusted with the attitudes of some people
So what it boils down to is "As long as I get my share who gives a rip about wild fish"
Kudos to Doc, DanS, Sparkey, B-Run, Jerry Garcia and others for seeing the blatant greed behind this ruling

You're right Grandpa, but they were specifically referring to smolts... the ones released from the hatchery are MUCH larger than their wild counterparts of the same chronologic age. That's just one more way a genetically inferior creature is given an unfair advantage over one with superior genetics. That big fat smolt is gonna have a major survival advantage in terms of size, and it stands a good chance of returning to spawn in the wild. But pity it's poor progeny that don't have the proper genetics to produce returning adults. That lineage basically gets snuffed out in one generation.

In the meantime, wild fish are losing out at multiple levels in their natural lfe cycle. Hatchery smolts outcompete their wild counterparts by out-eating them and displacing them from the prime juvenile riverine habitat which is already in short supply. If that hatchery smolt returns as an adult to spawn in the wild, the spawning habitat it occupies will not be made available to a wild native fish. And for what? For its lineage to be snuffed out in the next generation?

That folks is a waste of the finite carrying capacity of in-river habitat.... mutant fish are taking up space and consuming limited resources, but producing no self-sustaining population. Those resources could serve a much higher and greater purpose if consumed by much more productive self sustaining runs of wild fish.

That's like replacing the best workers in a factory with lazy, good-for-nothing employees that turn out zero product. Let's see how long that factory stays in business! Carry that analogy to all the rivers up and down the west. What were once some of the most robust and productive natural "fish factories" have slipped into perpetual decline as more and more hatchery fish are pumped into them.

For the past century we have relied on hatcheries to make up for the lost natural productivity of degraded river systems. Habitat degradation becomes easier to ignore as long as fishable numbers continue to swim upriver to support the various fisheries. Too bad that the majority of those fish are artificially produced.

The science to support this is clearly there, but obviously, decision-makers have chosen to ignore the mistakes of the past and instead continue down the path of doom started 150 years ago. Short-term economic gain has foiled meaningful salmon recovery at every crossroads during this entire period. Unfortunately it seems nothing has changed.

AMEN, KK, AMEN!

Been reading this forum for years now. Now this latest scam comes down from DC. And wouldn't you know it, the exact same people who are going to war against WSR are sitting here arguing that a fish is a fish is a fish.

Is a zoo tiger the same as a wild tiger??? Same blood, same fur, same teeth. Yup, my BIO 101 class tells me that it's a tiger. How about taking that zoo tiger and releasing it into the wild? What happens? It dies because it does not know how to fend for itself- IT CAN'T HUNT TO FEED ITSELF. But now the guvmint (not scientists, but the damn courts???) tells me that a zoo tiger is identical to it's wild counterpart and will be counted as part of the world population. See, no more tiger problems because they aren't going extinct any time soon. The pen is mightier than the sword.

Start breeding a handful of zoo tigers to increase population and not add any new blood. All the relatives are having cubs, endlessley recycling the same genetic materials. Now what do you end up with??? Eventually these inbreed jeds (ya with me plunker?) are going to develop some serious problems and that will be the end of the tiger population. Kind of like all the eggs in one basket.

Hatchery fish work the exact same way.

If a good % of people who spend their time caring about or harvesting salmonids don't even know the difference between hatch or wild fish, are the 'esteemed gentlemen' in DC going too?? (And may all the greedy ba$tards who sell their souls, either on purpose or ignorantly, ROT IN ETERNAL DAMNATION) Of course not, and with one swoop of the pen, all is now well. Move forth and multiply as we can mitigate through hatcheries. Somewhere in the past century our guvmint has played this exact scene...history does repeat itself.

I agree that the ESA has been abused- but from boths ends. The guvmint has failed to act upon the science by getting the riverine ecosystems locked up in a quagmire of 'studies', buying time for some legal precedence and go full scale policy. Bingo, 30+ years of scientific study, with minimal change to the status quo, and a couple of years after the Hogan decision this comes out???

Does this mean 'we' will give up??? Hell no, this is not going to end with DC making BS policy about something they know nothing about. The biggest long term investment we have is our kids. Mine are being taught at home, AND IN SCHOOL, that this world is all we have and that extinction IS PERMANENT. There is more to this life than paper, electricity, and oil.

William

PS- Hatchery smolts DO NOT return as adults anywhere near as efficiently as Wild fish. It is pretty pathetic, all things considered.