"Tom G" wrote in message
...
Now I'm wondering about the lack of survival skills in hatchery fish.
How many of them fail to thrive in the wild because they don't know
how/what to eat? Could this be part of the problem with the low success
rate of fish restoration projects like the one Stan Gula was working on
with Salmon in Massachusetts? Does this imply that preservation is even
more important because restoration is not an effective possibilty after
preservation has failed?

OK, I can answer that a little. I don't know anything about survivability
of hatchery trout, but I know a little about salmon. I doubt that the pale
color is due to hatchery chow. They make really colorful trout pellets. I
caught a brookie at a pool inside the hatchery a few years ago (they let
school groups, scouts, etc. bring in kids for lessons) and it was as orange
as a farm raised salmon.

The poor salmon returns here are not problems with survivability in the
streams. The salmon are planted as fry - just a few weeks after hatching.
The studies of the populations in the breeder streams (I'm talking low
fertility New England freestoners feeding the Connecticut River) show that
they do very well - millions reach the smolt stage and start the migration
to the Atlantic. Unfortunately, very few come back and nobody's really sure
why that is. We started this program (we as in Mass., VT, CT, NH and USF&W)
at the worst possible time. It's probably a hopeless cause trying to bring
them back to the Connecticut when the world population is seeing such a
disastrous decline.

--
Stan