Don't confuse two very separate issues...

1. The study is not anti-hatchery, nor does it call for ending any hatchery programs. Hatchery programs are necessary for harvest fisheries, be they sport, tribal, or non-tribal commercial.

2. What the study is saying is that pretending you can use hatchery fish to rescue wild runs with "wild broodstock" programs can be very dangerous for the fish...they have consistently been shown to NOT work. Except in the direst of dire circumstances (i.e., Redfish Lake Sockeye), the fish are far better off being left in the river to spawn.

Fish on...

Todd

Doc,

I would think you would support further separation between hatchery fish and wild fish. Here is my argument. If successive hatchery generations have reduced capacity for reproduction, then hatchery fish that intermingle with wild fish will be less likely to successfully pass on its genes. In fact, if you carry the reduced capacity out several generations for pure hatchery strains, you may even have hatchery fish with almost zero reproductive capacity thereby impacting wild stocks minimally. Yes, the hatchery buck will try to fertilize the wild fish eggs, but their reproductive juice will have no pop. So then the wild buck comes in and fertilizes and make baby wild salmon.

Just a thought.

I agree Todd

Hatcheries are not going anywhere and there are places that they offer opportunity where none would exist without them.

The issue is whether or not any co-mingling of hatchery and wild steelhead affects the productivity of Wild steelhead. If it does than that is a valid argument for halting hatchery plants on rivers with a wild population that don’t need hatchery fish to sustain the run.

The big issue for me is the proper use of hatcheries.

Todd here's an example for you on a river that is most likely your favorite. The Sauk was planted with 30,000 hatchery winter steelhead to return this year though that is not very many I am sure you would agree that there is no viable reason to be planting that river. On top of that 30,000 is a 50% increase from years past. In this case it is not a proper use of hatcheries. Wouldn’t you agree? Especially since they have no way of trapping those adults returning.

The sauk is not the only one, there are others that receive very little angler effort during a time when those fish are present and unless they are harvested in the main stems most will go unharvested.

JoJo, fer sher, there should be no hatchery plants anywhere that there is not an effective adult collection facility to get them out of the river if they are not harvested.

DiverX, the issue is actually even simpler than you laid out...yes, there should be a separation between the hatchery and wild fish...and it can be done with tradtional hatchery fish, which are already separated, rather than wasting wild fish to make wild broodstock that are then separated.

Both of those issues, by the way, are fully laid out and supported as such in the Hatchery Scientific Review Group's documents and recommendations.

Fish on...

Todd

I am not fish biologist nor do I claim to be one. But some one please tell me what is wrong with taken wild fish eggs and milt and hatch them in a controlled environment away from floods and predators. So that it insures maximum survival, then release the fry into the river system. Can you still call them wild fish? I don’t know.
With loss of natural habitat from urban growth and logging and 100 year floods every other year I see unfortunate need for hatcheries. From what I see a lot of the Puget Sound rivers have already lost their natural spawning areas and need help to keep the runs going. So if I am wrong please explain.

skydrifter

This is from the article don't know if it helps.

Earlier work by researchers from OSU and the Oregon Department of Fish
and

Wildlife had suggested that first-generation hatchery fish from wild
brood

stock probably were not a concern, and indeed could provide a short-term


boost to a wild population. But the newest findings call even that

conclusion into question, he said.

"The problem is in the second and subsequent generations," Blouin said.[/

Good call Doc. We've all slummed from one point in time or another...

I am not sure the eye catching headline is deserved, often these kind of headlines indicate that research funding is about to be lost and this is a way to generate public support for continued funding. That salmonid hatcheries generate a loss of reproductive fitness has been know for many years. What is interesting about this study is the recognition that the loss of reproductive fitness has a genetic component and is not just because of phenotype. This is not new, the salmon aquaculture industry has worked for years to increase the reproductive fitness of their broodstock. Numerous studies have shown that handling stress, stress from crowding, and other hatchery practices alter the hormone levels in sexually maturing fish. While eggs are maturing the altered hormone levels, importantly the growth hormone, are passed to the eggs. Apparently this has a genetic effect that causes a change in the growth hormone in the resulting offspring. This can lead to decreased fry survival, smaller body size, and in adult fish reduced fecundity in females and poor sperm quality in males.

Yakima/Klickitat fisheries has several ongoing studies looking at the reproductive ecology and success of hatchery and wild spring chinook. The paper, "Breeding Success of Wild & First Generation Hatchery Female Spring Chinook Spawning in an Artificial Channel [Schroder, S., et al.]" is a good study that examines broodstock program potential. It is online at the following site.

http://www.ykfp.org/publications/pubjumpmenu.htm

I am not convinced that using carcasses of hatchery fish for nutrient enhancement is a good idea. If the carcasses are consumed by juvenile fish in the river thy are going to get a dose of the altered hormones, natural birth control. Several years ago studies showed that using spawned hatchery carcasses to feed fish in the hatchery reduced reproductive fitness of the resulting adults.

WRONG!

It's a matter of which jizz hits the wild eggs first. If the hatchery sperms get first crack, it's game over... those eggs fertilized with inferior genes are toast. That wild hen's natural reproductive/genetic destinity has effectively been squelched... a genetic dead end for a prime specimen within the population as a whole. Her contribution to the total gene pool is effectively eradicated at the moment hatchery sperms penetrate and fertilize her eggs.

Do that enough times, brood after brood, and the cumulative toll leaves the wild gene pool incrementally more impoverished as the years go by.

***

You did touch on one great point about hatchery genetics being a dead end unto themselves. That is the only reason we see no hatchery pollution of the wild gene pool, and for that we can be thankful.

So to summarize, hatchery fish have no lasting effect on "polluting" the wild gene pool. The detrimental effect that is most evident is reduction of genetic diversity in the wild population via the mechanism I described above.

I once saw this one guy suggest that the thing to do with an unwanted hatchery fish is to hang it in the trees... Puts the non-native carcass and its bad juices out of the river all together, he said. But when this guy suggested that, a bunch of people got upset because hanging unwanted hatchery fish in trees (or throwing them into bushes) seemed wasteful.

The guy said that the wasteful part was spending limited funds to create fish that were planted into rivers with no collection facilities, saw few anglers because they never "stacked up" and threatened the native populations when they tried to spawn.

The guy did concede that some rivers are doomed hatchery hatcheries, and on those rivers unwanted hatchery fish can be sent off to the trap for food bank collection, he said.

Don't remember who the guy was.

Upper Flat,

At least it was a guy that said all of that and not just some "dude"...

I know this other guy that said native fish were different from wild, "wild" is what the college girls went in that video on the late night infomercial...

another thought, how about triploid hatchery fish? i'm imagining a river full of 30lb steelhead, though it'd be a bummer that none of them would be full of eggs.

maybe a way to make them all female?

Triploids for anadramous fish would serve no purpose... because they are sterile, they would never return to nearshore marine areas or river systems on a spawning migration. They would just roam the ocean getting bigger and bigger as all their energy is invested in growth instead of gonad production.

Great for trout in contained impoundments... just keep getting bigger and bigger til they are caught. Pointless for salmon/steelhead.

How about triploid blackmouth in Puget Sound? If they would stay, like south sound pen reared chinook, it seems like a good investment/project for us sportsfishers.

I hope most of the triploid talk is tounge and cheek because we have messed with mother nature enough I can't believe anyone would seriously consider something like that.

You never heard about the 750 pound salmon, JoJo? Not pulling your leg. I might be off on the details, but read about them a couple of times a few years back. Raised in Australia(?) New Zealand(?). GMO'd to the max. Project was shut down and destroyed. But if one outfit can do it, so can another. I'm sure someone, somewhere is actively in the process of producing super strains. (It's the only thing that makes sense to feed the world, IMO).

We will never be through modifying Nature. Where are the human clones? I don't know, but I'll bet they are somewhere. Spooky, but burying one's head in the sand about reality won't change it. I'm thinking cloning wild fish...by the millions.......yikes!

These bios are in bed with the pharmaceutical companies. They're just making a case to do a study by feeding the hatchery fish Viagra to see how much they will reproduce in the wild when they return.

Seriously I'd like to see the complete study. It smells of anti-hatchery sentiment.

yeah, might as well just stick our heads in the sand, then.

...Can't we sacrifice just one of our rivers for a "run" of 750 lb. king salmon (remember the thread about the hardest fighting fish??) How big a Kwickfish would ya need to pull for those guys??

Quickly number 1 is that the BPA is invovled which could have political influence.

Was there a control group? Did they sample a small population of wild fish to see how they did? I would like to see quality control data too. Is there any bias?