Panel of biologists: hatcheries don't benefit wild salmon stocks

Willi wrote:

I disagree. IMO, by carefully managing hatcheries the result can be more
natural, but hatchery produced fish will always be different than
naturally spawned wild fish. Hatcheries are a last resort for restoring
native, wild fish populations.

I agree with you, Willi, but with the caveat that I think hatcheries
could be much more effective than they are now, but it would cost money.
I suspect that a big problem (maybe THE problem) is that the fish that
are raised and survive in hatcheries are those best adapted to hatchery
conditions, which are very benign compared to wild conditions. They
don't have to deal with predators, weather and water conditions, and
diseases in the same way that wild fish do. In the end, you get a cohort
of fish that hasn't been culled by natural conditions, so there is a
"drift" of their genetics toward adaptation to man-made hatchery conditions.

In principle, these problems could be addressed by more natural
conditions in the hatchery, but the cost would be very high.

From: (Bill)

The Atlantic Salmon here in Nova Scotia is so low that almost every
river here is "stock enhanced" - meaning that a portion of the
"naturally" returning salmon are intercepted and stripped of eggs and
milt, and then the hatchery plants the eggs or very young of these
"wild" fish and places them into the river. This has worked very well,
and the Margaree bears the proof of this.

How is the Margaree doing? I was in N.S. in 1998 for a couple of weeks and had
thoughts about fishing for a few days. I talked with the lady at the Atlantic
Salmon Museum, (turns out we have some common acquaintances), and she said the
runs in the past few years had been very poor. I also spoke with the few
fishermen I saw working the river, and they said pretty much the same thing.
The river was not at all crowded, so I doubt they were giving me the old "no
fish here" routine.

Has the Margaree come back in more recent times, or was 1998 just a bad year?


George Adams

"All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of
youth that doth not grow stale with age."
---- J.W Muller

Hi,

The Margaree is sort of holding its own. Lats season was not good for the
early run (June and early July), but was very good for the late run, which
holds the multi-sea-year fish and occurs in September/October.
The good news we thought we were getting was that the hatchery is being
upgraded and will hatch more salmon and place more egg boxes this year -
which was the reason for the concern over the news that a State court had
actually judged that hatchery fish would have to be included in river
counts - that would destroy the Margaree.

The other sad news about the Margaree is that it was found that at least one
smallmouth bass was in Lake Ainslie (at the headwaters of the NE Margaree).
This has seen DNR put an extended double bag limit of bass on that
population, and a longer season in anattempt to limit the impact of these
fish on the salmon. Hopefully they will stick around only in Ainslie and not
get into the river proper. Only time will tell I suppose.

The North is really coming back however, due to the re-building of the banks
below the bridge so that the water runs wild like it used to before they
tried to channel it. The river had a very good early run of both sea-trout
and salmon last season.

Bill
http://www.tightlines.ca

Bill wrote:

The part that got my attention was:
"A federal judge in Eugene ruled three years ago that the Fisheries
Service had to count hatchery fish when it evaluated the strength of
salmon stocks. That caused Oregon Coastal Coho salmon to be removed
from the threatened species list."
....snip.......
The Atlantic Salmon is an endangered fish, if they ever forced the
feds up here to count the released hatchery fish as part of the
bio-mass, then it's game over for these fish.......

Precisely. Development, mining, and logging interests that are trying
to confuse the issue. There is great pressure from these lobbies to
blur the distinction between hatchery fish and wild fish. In most
places
in the PNW, hatchery steelhead and salmon are physically marked somehow,
usually by fin-clipping. Once you include hatchery fish in counts used
to determine stock strengths, you then can go on to maintain that wild
and hatchery fish are essentially the same (this argument is already
being made by the development interests), and later to stop altogether
distinguishing wild fish from hatchery fish in any way for management
purposes (again, currently being urged, and in the case of some tribal
hatchery operations, already being done).

Relying on hatcheries alone has failed in Atlantic salmon restoration.
Relying on hatchery output *alone* (or even primarily) to save wild
steelhead and Pacific salmon in the PNW will also fail.

Hatchery fish, produced only from truly wild brood stock and in numbers
*as small a possible* to take angling pressure off wild fish, can
perhaps play a valuable but *minor* stop-gap role, but only as a
supplement to the much more important efforts to maintain and restore
viable habitat (and eventually, I believe, to the breaching of a large
number of dams). These critical habitat restoration efforts are what
stick in the craw of the pro-development interests, which is why they
are actively trying to muddy the waters.

Some more background on the panel's findings, and why they were ignored
by the National Marine Fisheries Service, for those who are interested:

Eureka Alert: "Government appointed panel of scientists responds to
NMFS 'Censorship' by publishing in Science""
http://tinyurl.com/2oykz

Seattle Times: "Salmon panel goes public in dispute over hatchery fish"
http://tinyurl.com/35l22

San Francisco Chronicle: "Salmon jeopardized by method used in run
count"
http://tinyurl.com/225f9

JR

rw wrote:
Willi wrote:


I disagree. IMO, by carefully managing hatcheries the result can be
more natural, but hatchery produced fish will always be different than
naturally spawned wild fish. Hatcheries are a last resort for
restoring native, wild fish populations.


I agree with you, Willi, but with the caveat that I think hatcheries
could be much more effective than they are now, but it would cost money.
I suspect that a big problem (maybe THE problem) is that the fish that
are raised and survive in hatcheries are those best adapted to hatchery
conditions, which are very benign compared to wild conditions. They
don't have to deal with predators, weather and water conditions, and
diseases in the same way that wild fish do. In the end, you get a cohort
of fish that hasn't been culled by natural conditions, so there is a
"drift" of their genetics toward adaptation to man-made hatchery
conditions.

In principle, these problems could be addressed by more natural
conditions in the hatchery, but the cost would be very high.


I don't get your point. If these "natural" conditions were reproduced in
the hatcheries, the resulting mortality would be the same as in stream
bred fish. If that's the case, why not just use the stream as the
hatchery. Instead of spending money on the hatchery and the fish for
stocking, use the money to improve the conditions for natural reproduction.

I seeing stocking as having two main uses:

1. To provide a put and take fishery in places where natural
reproduction isn't possible (However, in cases like that I question if
the fish being stocked belong in those waters)


2. As a stop gap method to supplement or reintroduce a native fish
population. If this needs to be an ongoing program, something is wrong
with the fishes' environment and that needs to be addressed if the
fishery is ever going to change from a man made one to a natural self
sustaining one. Supplementing hatchery stock on top of a naturally
reproducing population of the species of fish causes lots of problems.
In many cases it the reduces the reproduction success of the stream bred
fishes.

Willi

Willi wrote:

I don't get your point.

Some hatcheries supplement declining species of anadromous fish. The
Sawtooth Hatchery near Stanley, for example, breeds and stocks
steelhead, chinook, and sockeye. The fish aren't declining because of
poor spawning habitat. That's nearly pristine. The main cause of the
decline is almost certainly a series of dams on the Lower Snake and the
Columbia. (Although there's plenty of disagreement among politicians
about that, there's little disagreement among fisheries biologists.)

The ultimate solution is to remove some or all of the dams, and
eventually that will happen, because they make no economic sense. In the
meantime, the hatcheries are a stopgap measure. Your Point 2.

My point is that if hatcheries must be used, even temporarily, they
could possibly be used in a better way -- in a way that minimizes
genetic problems. But it would cost more money.