News coverage on wildhatchery fish

[lost_sailor]

Henry came in after my tirade, so he missed out on some quotable rhetoric - - but at least the :bowdown: boss won't read where I REALLY was
:dance:
Salem Statesman-Journal (http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=57753)

He also doesn't mention the part of the bill requiring ALL hatchery fish to be from wild stock ... to complete the LOOP in LOOPhole.

I do like Henry's style when he gets to write the fun stuff

[Dragfreedrift]

Saw the article myself....good for all of us to read. We must all be aware of what is going on so as no to be "surprised" when something happens.


Half Canuck

Back to the top!

[Salmon Stryker]

bump

[Born to be Wild]

I'll bump this one in a big hurry. (Even though I haven't read it yet)!
I did hear about it at the ODFW meeting today from one of our excellent biologist (during one our breaks).
I even asked a biologist that doesn't visit or participate in the ifish site to go to ifish.net and copy/paste and print a reply done by GutshotApe on the Wild Fish vs Hatchery Fish thread regarding this issue.
This I did because I was talking with an "old timer" from Brookings and a bio about "wild fish" issues during a break. This gentleman from Brookings has been around so long, I'm sure he got to experience the good old days when there was excessive wild fish around and has the knowledge of the difference and importance of wild fish.
He was pretty sharp. But he didn't think there was educational info on ifish.net
He might be visiting the site after I explained some of the things I have read on there and showed him gutshot's reply.
He would be a warm welcome and contribution to this site.

By the way, he read the reply (by Gutshot) and was impressed, but he already knew that!
Quite a gentleman and a pleasure to meet.
I will go out of my way to track him down and invite him to participate on ifish. (Living all the way down the Coast in Brookings, he got up and left with his partener early afternoon before the meeting adjourned)

I will post Gutshot's quote below, and there are more to add regarding Lost_Sailors work done in Salem yesterday.

One critically important survival trait is the ability of a salmon egg to survive, develop and hatch in an oxygen-poor environment. I read a study a long time ago that measured the oxygen content of water flowing under the gravel in redds. Over the several weeks or months eggs spend in the gravel the oxygen supply varies, generally decreases, and as I recall, sometimes falls very low towards the end of the incubation period due to siltation, etc. Many eggs fail to hatch.....only the strong survive......and there is no doubt a genetic component for this trait to be passed down.

But almost all eggs taken from wild fish but then hatched in plastic trays at the hatchery hatch. The weaker individuals that might have never hatched under natural conditions instead go on to potentially spawn in the wild. Their offspring will not survive in the gravel as well as those of wild-hatched fish.

There are artificial selective factors throughout the life of a hatchery fish.
--------------------
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum...........A.Bierce
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">

[fishmore1]

Maybe someone can explain to me how the fish surived years ago. when there was no dams no hatcherys. and then man moves in puts in dams to create energy which we all need to surive. Im not trying to be a smart a** but I can not under stand why we should not have a say in how to run our hatcherys.
I guided for about 3 years most people did not know how to tell the difrence. Native / hatchery fish .
And I know thay could not tell the diffrence when fighting the fish. Maybe some one could explain something to me were did the hatchery fish come from? A native fish? Only the strong fish make it to and from the ocean. when it was just natives. only the strong were able to come back and re produce years ago. why should it be any diffrent for the hatchery fish only the strong surive. Just my 2 cents. If some one could tell me were to find out more info so I can under stand more on this toppic. or call me at 541-367-1939 Thanks Scott Marvin graemlins/1zhelp.gif

[lost_sailor]

Ohhhhh it's a long story.

You probably don't understand the big deal between tree farms and old growth forest either. To me it's a spiritual thing, so hard to explain or analyze.

I don't believe that a wild fish is "better" than a hatchery fish, as far as individual fish go. But wild fish are very important to protect - if only as a source for future hatcheries.

Wild fish populations evolve to be perfectly adapted to a particular stream ... the simplest example is if a stream has a lot of natural obstacles, the fish come back before they get too big. But a lot of finer details about food sources for smolts, run timing, disease resistance, etc.
Also, why do we want to pour billions of dollars into keeping fish populations alive when they are quite capable of doing it (so to speak) themselves?

Someone else take a stab at the explanation, I'll try to Google up some reading material.

http://eesc.orst.edu/salmon/background/whysave.html

http://salmonofthewest.fws.gov/wild.htm

http://eesc.orst.edu/salmon/background/wild.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/52481_ssalmoned.shtml

http://www.sfu.ca/cstudies/science/salmon/convenor.htm

http://www.salmoninfo.org/news/onlywild.htm

[ 03-06-2003, 09:04 AM: Message edited by: lost_sailor ]

[Straydog]

"Also, why do we want to pour billions of dollars into keeping fish populations alive when they are quite capable of doing it (so to speak) themselves?"

This the part I can not get........

My local elected representatives are all conservative, fiscally and socially.

Yet, when you (I) ask them how it is more fiscally conservative to insist, as they most all do, that hatcheries are the way to go rather than bring back naturally producing fish populations, you get a deer in the headlight stare and rarely an answer. :whazzup:

[GutshotApe]

A state senator from a district with commercial fishing interests once asked me if I thought hatchery salmon were inferior. I answered that they don't taste inferior.....but from a reproductive standpoint, the ability to perpetuate the species in the wild, hatchery fish were definitely inferior. Not hearing the desired answer, the good senator changed the subject. :hoboy:

[Ty]

Hatchery vs Wild...... The age ol' debate. DO we really believe that our fisheries in the Northwest are still sustainable w/ our current managment stradegies and lingering doom of habitait loss?? Make no mistake current managment stratagies of hatcheries in the NW are a relic from days of ol', but they don't have to be that way.
It is a irony that hatchery fish will never benifit wild fish. The effect of hatchery fish on wild fisih can be minimized and where wild fish don't exisist anymore, hatchery fish should still play a key role in our fisheries.
There is beyond a resonable doubt that hatchery fish are less than fit to reproduce in the wild with out bringing up the fact that many time they are reproductivly isolated in spawning times due to manipulation of hatchery stocks.
These effects can be minimized by intergrating wild stocks into every hatchery population, prefferable from the nearest wild population as to limit effects of the few that may spawn in the wild. Brood stock programs should be changed to increase genetic variation within a hatchery population by increasing the brood stock, take three of four times adults, and discard the excess fish in the name of science, as to release the same number of smolts just with a increased number of parents as to limit the effects of genetic drift. COmming up with creative rearing statagies that lower the raceway dencities, increase cover and create natural structure, and install mechanical feeders. Some of the differences berween hatchery and wild fish are labeled as "genetic" have physiological pressures that are induced through the hatchery process that reduce survival in the wild, I would caution anyone to jump on the genetic bandwagon so to speak in labeling differences between the two.
The harsh reality is hatcheries good or bad are a key managment tool and are here to stay as long as we can afford them and come up with creative solutions to ever challenging changing conditions.
For someone in a fisheries career and a lifelong fisherman, I challenge the average joe fisherman to not make fisheries managent decitions, but put pressures on the powers that be to make the "right" choices, not nessisarily for fisherman but for the resource as a whole.

Tight lines