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Hatchery Brat Vs. Hatchery Broodstock

15K views 171 replies 33 participants last post by  Ladyangler 
#1 ·
ATTN: Neuronik, Todd, Steelbum, and Wild Oar.

After reading the posts in relation to the Clackamas broodstock program I have a question. Since you guys seem to be in the know about this stuff could you help me understand?

This question is based on the presumption that hatchery production of fish is not going to go away( I know, big presumption, but for the sake of discussion). Which is worse for Wild fish, a hatchery program that utilizes out of basin stock to create a catch and kill fishery or a program that utilizes Broodstock( first generation hatchery fish spawned from wild stock)for a catch and kill fishery?

Thanks,
John
 
#2 ·
Broodstock programs are worse.

Segregated programs where the hatchery fish are either all harvested or all collected out of the river to prevent them from spawning is the best way to have hatchery fish and wild fish in the river at the same time.

Integrated broodstock programs lead to fish that are not as fit...and in spite of the popular opinion out there amongst their proponents, even one generation removed broodstock fish exhibit very different behaviors and express very different genetic traits, and those traits and behaviors have been shown to be inheritable.

Fish on...

Todd
 
#3 ·
Broodstock programs are worse.

Segregated programs where the hatchery fish are either all harvested or all collected out of the river to prevent them from spawning is the best way to have hatchery fish and wild fish in the river at the same time.

Integrated broodstock programs lead to fish that are not as fit...and in spite of the popular opinion out there amongst their proponents, even one generation removed broodstock fish exhibit very different behaviors and express very different genetic traits, and those traits and behaviors have been shown to be inheritable.
So does that mean its better to have an out of basin hatchery fish spawn with a wild fish than a broodstock hatchery fish spawn with a wild fish?
 
#6 · (Edited)
After reading the attached paper on the other post I still do not get it. First generation hatchery fish( i.e broodstock, bred from wild parents) show almost identical reproductive success, and identical genetics(no mutated alleles). Also, in a cited reference in that paper they state that first generation hatchery fish( W x W parents hatchery reared) are 2.2% more likely to be eaten in the wild by predators than wild reared fish. a difference, yes, but the catastrophic type of difference that its made to sound, probably not .

The conclusion of that paper is that continually breeding hatchery reared fish( second generation offspring of W x W) will cause genetic mutation and severely decreases the ability of those fish to reproduce, making it an ineffective way to bolster fish numbers.
 
#7 ·
In the Araki et al. paper, the authors compare 1st and 2nd generation hatchery bred fish as a way to compare the effect of a single generation of captivity. Making this comparisson controls for all other possible confounding factors that would exist with a comparisson between completely wild fish and 1st generation captivity fish (ie breeding environments). Comparing 1st and 2nd generation in captivity instead was just a way to do a truely controlled experiment. The difference between these two fish is only ONE generation in captivity, and that is sufficient to render the fish less viable.
In addition, however, the authors also compare PURE wild fish to the first generation captivity fish, and find an almost identical result: reproductive success of 1st generation captivity fish is only ~ 60% that of the purely wild fish. This information is in a SUPPLEMENTAL table S1. Science Magazine is annoying like that, in that they rely on lots of "supplemental data" to keep articles short.
So, the conclusion of this study really is that even one generation in captivity makes the fish less viable. This is problematic of course for at least two big reasons: 1. In the case of broodstock programs, wild fish genetics are deliberately converted into hatchery genetics by the artificial breeding process, and 2. That any stray fish that breed with the natives (that must happen to a significant extent) will damage the gene pool.
 
#8 · (Edited)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol318/issue5847/images/large/318_100_F2.jpeg

Is this the one? The chart on the right shows reproductive success of wild fish marked with a "+", first generation hatchery fish next on the right( varying from .5 to 1.2 average of .8), and second generation hatchery fish next?

Araki also cites a previous paper .
"The use of hatcheries for supplementing salmonid populations has become particularly popular. Nevertheless, whether such programs actually increase the size of wild populations remains unclear, and predictions that supplementation fish drag down the fitness of wild fish remain untested. To address these issues, we performed DNA-based parentage analyses on almost complete samples of anadromous steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the Hood River in Oregon (U.S.A.). Steelhead from a supplementation hatchery (reared in a supplementation hatchery and then allowed to spawn naturally in the wild) had reproductive success indistinguishable from that of wild fish. In contrast, fish from a traditional hatchery (nonlocal origin, multiple generations in hatcheries) breeding in the same river showed significantly lower fitness than wild fish. In addition, crosses between wild fish and supplementation fish were as reproductively successful as those between wild parents. Thus, there was no sign that supplementation fish drag down the fitness of wild fish by breeding with them for a single generation. On the other hand, crosses between hatchery fish of either type (traditional or supplementation) were less fit than expected, suggesting a possible interaction effect. These are the first data to show that a supplementation program with native brood stock can provide a single-generation boost to the size of a natural steelhead population without obvious short-term fitness costs. The long-term effects of population supplementation remain untested."
 
#9 ·
Each cycle through the hatchery machinery reduces reproductive fitness by 40%.

Let's look at the F1 generation. Clipped WBS fish straying onto the gravel have only 60% as productive as their wild cousins. Compared to a W x W cross (100%) a WBS x WBS pairing is only 36% as productive. A WBS buck spawning with a wild hen will diminish the reproductive potential of that hen to only 60%. If a wild run is struggling or teetering on the brink, it CANNOT afford that loss. If ten hens were fertilized by clipped WBS bucks, you may as well have killed 4 of those hens!

Here's what happens when hatchery fish are recycled for broodstock in a traditional hatchery program.

Suppose they took returning (60% fitness) clipped WBS fish into the hatchery for egg-take. Their F2 progeny would suffer another 40% reduction in reproductive fitness..... in other words the two-cycle hatchery fish would only be 36% as reproductively fit as their grandparents.

Run 'em a third cycle thru the hatchery (losing another 40% fitness) and the F3's would only be 22% as fit as their wild GGP's.

Run 'em thru a fourth cycle (losing another 40% fitness) and the resulting F4's would only be 13% as fit as their wild GGGP's.

Run 'em thru a fifth cycle (losing another 40% fitness), and the F5's are less than 8% as fit as the original stock they came from.

This is why recycled hatchery fish can't spawn worth a dam in the wild. In five generations, a hatchery will convert a perfect wild product into a reproductively worthless ****!
 
#10 ·
If I had to pick one I would rather have first generation broodstock fish with 60% fitness spawning with wild vs 5 generation 8% fitness out of basin fish. Thats what it comes down to right? Which is less harmful to the wild spawning population?
 
#13 ·
No, I don't want out of basin steelhead spawning in the wild...that's why I said I want them either caught or collected.

Period.

In the long run, they're not even as bad broodstock fish spawning due to the fact that they are terrible at it...they waste eggs and milt just as quickly as the broodstock programs do, but at least they return little to no genetic misfits to screw up the gene pool.

In Washington we're really starting to clamp down on "outplanting"...putting hatchery fish where there are no adult collection facilities to get them out of the river if they return and aren't harvested.

There should be no hatchery fish spawning at all, no matter if they are out of basin or in basin broodstock hatchery fish.

Both are bad for the wild fish...and as an added bonus, wild fish are better spawners, produce more returning adults, and do it for free, right in the river all by themselves.

Of course, the fish they produce are more wild fish...which is good for the fish, good for the fishing, and good for the fishermen...they just don't return clipped fish for bonking.

Fish on...

Todd
 
#14 ·
One scenario I don't often see addressed in the new broodstock programs is the possibility (probability?) that in some cases the wild fish collected for the hatchery spawning program is in fact a naturally-reared HxH offspring. I realize that HxH pairings are much less fit than a WxW, but I suspect their survival rate is still something greater than zero, so now we're re-introducing more hatchery genes back into the pool. The benefit of the broodstock was supposed to be elimination of the inbreeding that used to be so obviously detrimental, but really all we're doing is camoflaging or delaying it by a generation or two... The bogeyman is still waiting in the weeds.

On the other hand, people may say, "Look, if the HxH pairing is producing returning offspring, then that proves they're successful!" -- Uh, no, not really, unless those returnees can successfully reproduce themselves, and so on. Just because two fish appear to spawn successfully from an angler/harvest standpoint (whether harvested for the table or collected for broodstock) doesn't mean it's successful from a genetic/biological standpoint... if that chain gets broken anywhere down the line, it's still broken. Might as well have been broken right off the bat like the old-skool Alsea hatchery brat; at least that way it cleared the decks so to speak for Ma Nature to try and clean up the mess. Now, the genetic 'mess' lingers in the system for an extra generation or two while it continues to drag down the reproductive fitness of the wild population.
 
#15 ·
Thanks for the insight everyone. Its a little hard to pick through the scientific data, especially when it starts to contradict or refute itself at times. Thanks.

So would it be a safe assumption that H x H or H x W occurring in the wild would regain levels of reproductive success by a % every generation?
 
#16 ·
So would it be a safe assumption that H x H or H x W occurring in the wild would regain levels of reproductive success by a % every generation?
"Look, if the HxH pairing is producing returning offspring, then that proves they're successful!" -- Uh, no, not really, unless those returnees can successfully reproduce themselves, and so on. Just because two fish appear to spawn successfully from an angler/harvest standpoint (whether harvested for the table or collected for broodstock) doesn't mean it's successful from a genetic/biological standpoint... if that chain gets broken anywhere down the line, it's still broke.
These two quotes speak to the concerns about future generations of fish derived from naturally spawning (WBS x WBS) and/or (WBS x W).

Bottom line is this....

If the fish's life history goes from gravel to gravel, IT IS WILD!

It was born in the wild, foraged in the wild and evaded predators through ALL of its lifestages (egg, alevin, fry, smolt, adult) in the wild..... it has passed the environmental screening of what constitutes the desirable genetics for that system. The wild environment weeds out the bad genes just as surely and swiftly in these fish as life in a concrete tank permits crappy genes to persist in hatchery fish.

Genes are not an end to themselves.

It's the environment that determines which genes will persist in the population. These are the desirable genes that are the best fit for the environment in question... and the genes that get passed on to the next generation. The genetics of each surviving generation is continually refined by the environment.

So yes, for WBS fish straying onto the gravel, each successive generation in the natural environment improves reproductive fitness in the wild.

Conversely for wild fish, each generation in the hatchery environment reduces reproductive fitness in the wild. But you do get a much better fish adapted for life in a concrete tank.
 
#18 · (Edited)
OMG!
I went back through the archives about 5 years ago and read some of the broodstock threads back then.
Some of the propaganda from some of the guides was unreal!
Me and eyefish really got picked on for our stance and concerns regarding potential, serious, negative effects of broodstock hatchery fish on wild steelhead.
And even though me and POSclerk posted some disturbing scientific reports regarding broodstock programs back then, Marty, Scott, Travis and the like turned a blind eye to the science available even back then.
Along with a few non guides also.

Take a look at the things I high lighted & underlined from Mark Chilcote's report on the effects of both domestic and broodstock hatchery fish on wild steelhead that we posted back then.
Mark is a scientist that works for ODFW and is kind of the Eienstein of the bunch.

This negative broodstock science is not new.
I talked with Mark Chilcote on the phone back then after a popular ifisher tried to discredit this report being a "suplementation" report or "non broodstock" as we know them.
It is what it is and it is about the negative consequences of using both domesticated and broodstock hatchery steelhead on the wild steelhead populations.

The Adverse Reproductive Consequences of Supplementing Natural Steelhead Populations in Oregon with Hatchery Fish

Mark W. Chilcote

Abstract: The proportion of wild fish in 12 mixed populations of hatchery and wild steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) was evaluated for its relationship to mean and intrinsic measures of population productivity. The population mean of
ln(recruits/spawner) was used to represent mean productivity. Intrinsic productivity was represented by values for the Ricker a parameter as estimated from fits of spawner and recruit data. Significant regressions {p < 0.001} were found
between both measures of productivity and the proportion of wild fish in the spawning population {Pw}. The slopes of the two regressions were not significantly different {p = 0.55} and defined a relationship suggesting that a spawning
population comprised of equal numbers of hatchery and wild fish would produce 63% fewer recruits per spawner than one comprised entirely of wild fish. Study findings were not sensitive to likely levels of data error or confounded by extraneous habitat correlation with Pw. Population status assessments and conservation monitoring efforts should include Pw as a critical variable. For natural populations, removal rather than addition of hatchery fish may be the most effective strategy to improve productivity and resilience.

Between 1978 to 2000, depending on the steelhead population, regulations were implemented that made it illegal for anglers to keep wild fish. Based on information presented by Hooton (1987) and Reingold (1975) it was assumed that 10% of the wild steelhead caught and released under these new regulations died as a result of handling stress. Therefore, the fishery mortality rate for each population after implementation of the .wild release. regulations was calculated as 10% of the estimated harvest rate for the period prior to the regulation change.

Discussion
Natural productivity in 12 populations of Oregon steelhead was significantly influenced by 4 variables, one of which was the level of hatchery fish in the spawning population. It appeared the presence of hatchery fish depressed overall population productivity, reduced the number of recruits, and lowered the genetic fitness of wild fish. These negative effects were insensitive to the type of hatchery fish involved. Although the hatchery fish represented in five of the study populations were from hatchery broodstocks developed from the local wild population and managed in manner to avoid domestication, the advantages of this strategy as purported by (Cuenco et al. 1993, Flagg et al. 2000) were not apparent. Even if the acceptable statistical significance level for the hatchery broodstock variable was raised from 0.05 to 0.10, thereby enabling the inclusion of this fifth variable in the production regression model, its influence would have been minor (Table 2). For example, using this 5-variable model, the estimated reproductive success for .wild-type. hatchery fish would have been 0.335, whereas the reproductive success for .semi-domesticated. hatchery fish would have been 0.293. Overall, these results demonstrated that the use wild fish for hatchery broodstocks as a means to create hatchery fish that are reproductive equals of wild fish in the natural environment does not appear to be a promising endeavor.

The recruitment curves developed from the results of this study (Figure 3) illustrate that the number of naturally produced fish can be expected to decline as the presence of hatchery fish in the spawning population increases. It appears that naturally spawning hatchery fish, regardless of broodstock type, are a potential impairment to the subsequent production of recruits. When more than 10% of the naturally spawning population is comprised of hatchery fish, this impairment is not trivial.

There has been considerable interest concerning the use of various types of hatchery programs to help rebuild and restore depressed populations of wild fish (Waples 1991; Olney et al. 1994; Cuenco et al. 1993). Sometimes described as .supplementation. (Sterne 1995) this approach has both intuitive and theoretical appeal as reflected by Cuenco (1994) and Flagg et al. (1999).
However, based upon the results of a variety of simulations using the productivity model developed from the observations of this study, it appears that supplementation may be an ineffective tool for recovering depressed populations of wild fish. Such depressed populations appear to respond weakly to the addition of more spawners if they are hatchery fish (Figure 4). In addition, a byproduct of the supplementation strategy is a decline in the genetic fitness of wild fish. Although the magnitude of this fitness decline is not large when the level intervention is low (-3.9% when Ph = 0.10), it rapidly increases once the resulting proportion of hatchery fish becomes greater than 0.50 (Figure 6).

The results of this study suggest that naturally spawning hatchery fish, regardless of broodstock origin and quality, are ineffective at producing offspring that survive to adulthood. The observation that hatchery fish from .semi-domesticated. and .wild-type. hatchery broodstocks have essentially the same reproductive success makes a genetic explanation of this observation more difficult. It would seem that the .wild-type. hatchery fish should be genetically more similar to the local wild fish. Therefore, they should have better reproductive performance than hatchery fish from .semi-domesticated. broodstocks. However, as speculated by Reisenbichler and Rubin (1999), it is possible the genetic change that occurs as fish adapt to the hatchery environment may have more significance in terms of reproductive success in the natural environment than do the genetic shortcomings related to the geographic origin of the hatchery broodstock. Should this be the case, any genetic effect of broodstock origin may be difficult to detect.

An alternative genetic mechanism, unrelated to stock origin or selective changes, may be operating to create the reproductive differences between hatchery and wild fish. Genetic differences may arise from the common situation that returning hatchery fish are the offspring of substantially fewer parents than is the case for wild fish returning to the same basin. For example, approximately 160 fish are used annually as broodstock for the North Umpqua summer steelhead hatchery program. In contrast, the number of wild fish that spawn naturally in the North Umpqua basin is typically greater than 3,000 fish (Appendix 1). Therefore, the genetic base for the hatchery return is approximately 80 families, whereas for the wild fish it is roughly 1,500 families.

In summary, this study found that hatchery fish are poorly suited to reproduce under natural conditions and when allowed to do so have an adverse impact on the recruitment and productivity of natural steelhead populations. These results confirm the study supposition that hatchery fish are maladapted for reproductive survival in the natural environment. This confirmation is robust and applies to hatchery fish regardless of hatchery broodstock origin and various attempts to mimic the genetic and reproductive characteristics of wild fish. Further, it appears supplementation of depressed wild populations with hatchery spawners is an ineffective conservation strategy. Such efforts can be expected to yield only minor gains in the number of naturally produced recruits and cause a loss in the genetic fitness of wild fish. Therefore, the results of this study are consistent with the view that the most effective conservation role for hatcheries is one of impact avoidance, not direct intervention. It appears that limiting the proportion of hatchery fish in naturally spawning populations to less than 0.10 is an appropriate strategy to achieve this conservation role.
 
#19 ·
There's nothing new about it, and within the scientific world there's not even an argument about it anymore...yet the same tired arguments come out over and over again every time it comes up...no truly native fish left, the science is all wrong (and I'm right!), etc., etc., etc.,...

Eventually a full blown broodstock program will turn into exactly what we have now...an industrial 100% hatchery fish program...because we'll elminate all the actual native fish and be stuck with cloning returning hatchery fish.

That hasn't worked for the past 100 years, and it will continue to not work.

Fish on...

Todd
 
#20 ·
There's nothing new about it, and within the scientific world there's not even an argument about it anymore...yet the same tired arguments come out over and over again every time it comes up...no truly native fish left, the science is all wrong (and I'm right!), etc., etc., etc.,...

Eventually a full blown broodstock program will turn into exactly what we have now...an industrial 100% hatchery fish program...because we'll elminate all the actual native fish and be stuck with cloning returning hatchery fish.

That hasn't worked for the past 100 years, and it will continue to not work.

Fish on...

Todd


So hypothetically speaking;

hypothetic example: Sandy River

You would support electrodes (or similiar) in the river forcing all Salmon/Steelies to the Cedar Creek Hatchery.

True Native runs would be sent upstream.

Hatchery or Broodstock runs would always be clipped and regenerated downstream for harvest, donated to charities etc etc..

Almost like it was with Marmot Dam in place.

You could support this ?? in favor of broodstock programs ?
 
#21 ·
WBS programs for any salmonid species (salmon or steel) equates to siphoning off a portion of wild production and running it thru the hatchery machinery to convert that production in to a bonkable fin-clipped commodity.

At its very roots, A WBS program is a selfish endeavor whose sole objective is to mine eggs from the wild population to articifially prop up harvest harvest harvest!

Instead of investing in projects to boost self-sustaining wild production, management continues to invest its limited resources in programs that only drive wild populations toward further depletion... all in the name of maintaining harvest opportunities.

We've been doing it that way for 137 years, and the premise that man can produce these fish better than nature has simply not been borne out thru history.

Just remember that all of the early hatchery programs were essentially wild broodstock programs (they just didn't have a fancy name for it back then). They didn't work then, and they don't work now.

As the wild fish were depleted, so too were the hatcherymen's source of eggs. When they ran out of wild fish to mine, they simply resorted to collecting fish in basins far and wide throughout the PNW. This resulted in the mass transfer of wild eggs from one facility to another in hodge-podge fashion. The sole objective was to keep the incubators full.... never mind the health of the wild stocks from which the eggs were being mined.

Bottom line, every system in the PNW can use EVERY wild spawner it can muster. Stealing those fish just to make more hatchery fish is totally irresponsible.
 
#24 ·
WBS programs for any salmonid species (salmon or steel) equates to siphoning off a portion of wild production and running it thru the hatchery machinery to convert that production in to a bonkable fin-clipped commodity.

At its very roots, A WBS program is a selfish endeavor whose sole objective is to mine eggs from the wild population to articifially prop up harvest harvest harvest!

Instead of investing in projects to boost self-sustaining wild production, management continues to invest its limited resources in programs that only drive wild populations toward further depletion... all in the name of maintaining harvest opportunities.

We've been doing it that way for 137 years, and the premise that man can produce these fish better than nature has simply not been borne out thru history.

Just remember that all of the early hatchery programs were essentially wild broodstock programs (they just didn't have a fancy name for it back then). They didn't work then, and they don't work now.

As the wild fish were depleted, so too were the hatcherymen's source of eggs. When they ran out of wild fish to mine, they simply resorted to collecting fish in basins far and wide throughout the PNW. This resulted in the mass transfer of wild eggs from one facility to another in hodge-podge fashion. The sole objective was to keep the incubators full.... never mind the health of the wild stocks from which the eggs were being mined.

Bottom line, every system in the PNW can use EVERY wild spawner it can muster. Stealing those fish just to make more hatchery fish is totally irresponsible.

O.k. good info. - you are not on the Wild Broodstock bandwagon, fair enough.

But the question to summarize your opinion ?

Do you support Hatcheries using say mainly "Big Creek" stock or a similiar fairly robust, allbeit foriegn strain in rivers around Portland ?

Or..

Are you saying close all sportfishing & use nothing with mans involvement anywhere ?

I prefer to hear the bottomline suggestion, when a poster has a criticism.

???
 
#23 ·
You don't need electrodes...release them in Cedar Creek where they've been properly acclimated, and then get them all in the trap, then bonk every single one that is caught, and most of the problem goes away.

Araki found that one generation removed hatchery fish may have good spawning success, but the problem is that the progeny of those fish are now spawning together, or being brought into the hatchery, and then the problems really start.

The only way to avoid the cumulative effects is to do a one time infusion of broodstock juveniles, and then don't do it again...which would be kind of pointless, since the wild fish could do it as well, for free.

Fish on...

Todd
 
#54 ·
You don't need electrodes...release them in Cedar Creek where they've been properly acclimated, and then get them all in the trap, then bonk every single one that is caught, and most of the problem goes away.

Araki found that one generation removed hatchery fish may have good spawning success, but the problem is that the progeny of those fish are now spawning together, or being brought into the hatchery, and then the problems really start.

The only way to avoid the cumulative effects is to do a one time infusion of broodstock juveniles, and then don't do it again...which would be kind of pointless, since the wild fish could do it as well, for free.

Fish on...

Todd
I think what you are saying is that if we only look at the first generation of WxW raised in the hatchery, the fitness is about equal, but those fish then spawn together in the wild (because you can never get all of them out of the system) and thats when the problems start?? Is that an accurate summary of what you're saying?

FF
 
#28 ·
I definately have to chime in here-
but I'm on my way out the door to dip some smelt-

There are certainly "pros" and "cons" to both "types" of programs.
Without a hatchery program salmonid fishing opportunities would be mininmal, both sport and commercial. We need hatchery programs for the continued support of these fisheries.

Impacts to wild stocks are a different issue but at the same time inclusive.

The debate on which way to go- segragated vs. intergrated stocks is not so clear for salmon vs steelhead because of past management (over 100 years of harvest and hatcheries for slamon)of these species.

The study on the Hood is a good one, as are several others lik eon the Kalama.

more on that later-

as far as fishing goes for steelhead- brood from wild broodstcok fight harder and taste better and are around in the fishery for a much longer time. but they are much more difficult to raise in a one year hatchery program vs the traditional domesticated hatchery stock. Thus many of the brood fish don't become a smolt (grow big enough in one year). But if they do, then it's a good thing. and then it's a matter of what to do when so many brothers and sisters return from what are typically such a small program to begin with. Like 20 pair producing 2000 adults back-

got to run my son wants to go dip-
fish on
 
#34 ·
The study on the Hood is a good one, as are several others lik eon the Kalama.
I talked to a couple bio's a couple years ago that were involved in an extensive study there on the Kalama working with the different steelhead stocks.
I haven't seen anything from them yet.
Have you?
I know one guys name is Pat Hulett but don't recall the other.
If I remember right they work for WDFW, work out of an office here in Longview but spend most of their time on the Kalama.

It is a tough call on the hatchery fish.
Tough to wave goodbye to them.
But that is already taking place all around us here in SW Washington.
I think they are following Oregon's lead.

We do know the hatcheries have failed us.
We do know they depress the wild fish populations.
I think most of the big mess we are in right now is mostly due to hatcheries.
So what do we do?

I still say after all these years we need to take a good basin or two (like the Nestucca for example), get rid of all the hatchery programs there, manage it for wild, and see what happens.
Sure the guides would reject it, but it's our river too.
They have other rivers to guide on and they do that anyway.
Give us a river managed in a natural state.
No more artificial turds to polute the river.
Then if that works and satifies most fishermen, go do the same on a river like the Siletz.

In Washington, I'm not sure where you'd start.
I use to think one or two Columbia trib's would be a good choice but with that basin being so poluted with bazillions of hatchery mutts, not sure how that would work out.
You still would have those bazillion smolts causing the big predation problems down in the estuary.

I personally feel the hatchery problem in the Columbia is bigger than the sports & commercial fisheries inriver and ocean fisheries combined.
You fish some of those trib's and it just looks like a hatchery polluted wasteland.
 
#42 ·
I still say after all these years we need to take a good basin or two (like the Nestucca for example), get rid of all the hatchery programs there, manage it for wild, and see what happens.

Give us a river managed in a natural state.
No more artificial turds to polute the river.
Then if that works and satifies most fishermen, go do the same on a river like the Siletz.

.
There are a lot of those already. Here is a list of a few of them.

Salmon river,
Neskowin cr,
Little Nestucca,
Tillamook river,
Miami river,
Nehalem river(?),
Yamhill river,
Rickreall cr,
Luckiamute river.

There are plenty more. How are these rivers working out for ya with no hatchery Steelhead in them.

With hardly any fishing pressure on most of them, you should be able to have a field day catching and releasing on the ones that are open.

ODFW does spawning surveys on most, if not all of these streams. Some of them had hatchery Steelhead 15-20 years ago, some did not. Check the spawning surveys from 20 years ago and compare them with the present ones.

I don't think it worked the way you thought it would.
 
#35 ·
Start with the Skagit...the hatchery returns there have been so dismal over the decades that you would hardly miss them if they weren't there any more...plus it's the only Puget Sound system to routinely make escapement goals.

Coincidence?

Fish on...

Todd
 
#36 ·
ATTN: Neuronik, Todd, Steelbum, and Wild Oar.

After reading the posts in relation to the Clackamas broodstock program I have a question. Since you guys seem to be in the know about this stuff could you help me understand?

This question is based on the presumption that hatchery production of fish is not going to go away( I know, big presumption, but for the sake of discussion). Which is worse for Wild fish, a hatchery program that utilizes out of basin stock to create a catch and kill fishery or a program that utilizes Broodstock( first generation hatchery fish spawned from wild stock)for a catch and kill fishery?

Thanks,
John
The missing question is why are we not focussing on habitat. They want to sell liscences....period. The guides want to sell seats...period. Where does that leave us. As usual, disregarding an irreplaceable resource. There are rivers in this state with no hatchery producing large numbers of steelhead dispite loss of habitat, irigation, and polution (see the John Day). There are also some zipper lip streams on the coast that produce wild stealhead in volume. We know the fish can breed if left to do so. We know the chances increase if we fix the habitat.

But still there are some who think there is a happy medium. See the dam counts at bonneville for 2009 270 total steelhead. Give me a break. Hood River Broodstock program is a loser. Take out the dams, fix the habitat, what do you think will happen? What percent of fish will they kill here this year to return 200 fish next year. Dumb, dumb, dumb!!


BTW, great thread;-)
 
#37 ·
I have had a long day working at the Whiskey Creek Volunteer hatchery so I am tired. When I am tired I tend to say things that my wife says I should not have said. Oh well, here I go. Why don't we just give up this idea that we will ever see a really solid run of wild fish,,they are GONE. Things change, the world changes, and we change. We have spent trillions of $$$$$ chasing a wild dream that we can bring back something that has been gone for years, ie, wild fish. The state of OR spent MILLIONS OF $$$ this past year putting in bridges,,,hoping that maybe a fish or two MIGHT swim up a small stream that has not seen fish for years,,,if,,,EVER. We have to draw the line somewhere. If we are going to fish and catch fish to eat,,,,,we better take a long look at what we are doing with our tax dollars! Jerry Dove
 
#39 ·
WRONG!

We have spent BILLIONS of dollars saving dams and producing bazillions of hatchery fish to fuel the insatiable fisheries of the PNW and beyond (BC/AK).

Precious few dollars have actually been spent "chasing a wild dream" , i.e. actually saving wild fish. For example on the ESA-listed CR spring chinook, we set out to intentionally kill about 15% of the wild run each and every year (and oftentimes exceed that objective) just to have harvest access to hatchery spring chinook.
 
#40 ·
We spend far more money pretending that technofixes and hatchery fish will replace wild fish than we ever spend on actual wild fish...the fact that they are still relatively healthy in some areas, and at least present virtually everywhere, is a testament to how strong they are...just think how well they'd be doing if we actually tried to improve their runs, rather than just treat them as an irritant that gets in the way of "progress" and hatchery fish?

Fish on...

Todd
 
#43 ·
If Broodstocked fish where raised in captivity and released early to be printed to the river and not the hatchery, And the rules allowed us to release with high fins, We could help supplement the wild run. This could help offset the low redd survival due to mother nature. It is not just Habitat that has caused a decline in the Numbers, Increased Pressure by all parties involved, Severe storms of late and Poor Ocean survival. If appox 1-2.5% of the escapement can be captured for Broodstocking and thus provide a return of Appox the 50% of the Gravel to Gravel counter part. Lets say the fingerlings where released about the same age as they would normally be clipping them. 30% could be clipped for the Sportsman and 70% released with high fins at the time of clipping. This would save money on feeding, Create a much stronger smolt with survival of the fittest playing a much larger role then the full run clipped smolts. But still helping to supplement the wild run which would greatly benifit the system. And the need for out of basin stock would no longer be needed or desired. The chance of the full run brood brat mingeling with the wild is more desired the the out of basin assassin continuing to weaken our wild runs. We have all seen Clipped fish breeding in the stream or caught spawners in systems where they are not recycled from the hatchery. A percentage breed in the wild and come back at random times, Not always as early as hoped. The risk of out of basin stock is not worth the reward of harvest. If you can help by increasing the run annually by 50% even with a 60% breeding success of the returning 1st Generation broodstock as doc indicated would be a great help to the wild fish. Mother Nature does not allow a 60% breeding success of any steelie. The more making a nest the higher the chances of some surviving her Rath..... let not use Supplementation as a last resort. We always sit back and hope for the best then try to fix it when it teters on the brink of extinction... Lets become Proactive and look beyond Habitiat. But knowing Habitat still needs to have our full attention.
 
#45 ·
If Broodstocked fish where raised in captivity and released early to be printed to the river and not the hatchery, And the rules allowed us to release with high fins, We could help supplement the wild run. This could help offset the low redd survival due to mother nature. It is not just Habitat that has caused a decline in the Numbers, Increased Pressure by all parties involved, Severe storms of late and Poor Ocean survival. If appox 1-2.5% of the escapement can be captured for Broodstocking and thus provide a return of Appox the 50% of the Gravel to Gravel counter part. Lets say the fingerlings where released about the same age as they would normally be clipping them. 30% could be clipped for the Sportsman and 70% released with high fins at the time of clipping. This would save money on feeding, Create a much stronger smolt with survival of the fittest playing a much larger role then the full run clipped smolts. But still helping to supplement the wild run which would greatly benifit the system. And the need for out of basin stock would no longer be needed or desired. The chance of the full run brood brat mingeling with the wild is more desired the the out of basin assassin continuing to weaken our wild runs. We have all seen Clipped fish breeding in the stream or caught spawners in systems where they are not recycled from the hatchery. A percentage breed in the wild and come back at random times, Not always as early as hoped. The risk of out of basin stock is not worth the reward of harvest. If you can help by increasing the run annually by 50% even with a 60% breeding success of the returning 1st Generation broodstock as doc indicated would be a great help to the wild fish. Mother Nature does not allow a 60% breeding success of any steelie. The more making a nest the higher the chances of some surviving her Rath..... let not use Supplementation as a last resort. We always sit back and hope for the best then try to fix it when it teters on the brink of extinction... Lets become Proactive and look beyond Habitiat. But knowing Habitat still needs to have our full attention.
You CANNOT make a wild fish in a hatchery.
It CANNOT be done.
They understand some of the reasons why and others they don't.
No matter what has been tried, it cannot be done.
You need lots of natural spawners to pick their mates and spawn in the wild.
And survival of the fittest starts right there and doesn't let up for one minute thereafter.

Now maybe you did or didn't read post 18 where I posted some of Mark Chilcote's studies regarding using broodstock for "supplementation" or fishing harvest purposes.
If you read it he talks about using "wild only" broodstock for both purposes and is basically reccomending against it or what I say is a "lost cause bro". :D

Here's part of it I copied from above:

Post 18:

For natural populations, removal rather than addition of hatchery fish may be the most effective strategy to improve productivity and resilience.

It appeared the presence of hatchery fish depressed overall population productivity, reduced the number of recruits, and lowered the genetic fitness of wild fish. These negative effects were insensitive to the type of hatchery fish involved. Although the hatchery fish represented in five of the study populations were from hatchery broodstocks developed from the local wild population and managed in manner to avoid domestication, the advantages of this strategy as purported by (Cuenco et al. 1993, Flagg et al. 2000) were not apparent.

Overall, these results demonstrated that the use wild fish for hatchery broodstocks as a means to create hatchery fish that are reproductive equals of wild fish in the natural environment does not appear to be a promising endeavor.

The recruitment curves developed from the results of this study (Figure 3) illustrate that the number of naturally produced fish can be expected to decline as the presence of hatchery fish in the spawning population increases. It appears that naturally spawning hatchery fish, regardless of broodstock type, are a potential impairment to the subsequent production of recruits. When more than 10% of the naturally spawning population is comprised of hatchery fish, this impairment is not trivial.

Sometimes described as .supplementation. (Sterne 1995) this approach has both intuitive and theoretical appeal as reflected by Cuenco (1994) and Flagg et al. (1999).
However, based upon the results of a variety of simulations using the productivity model developed from the observations of this study, it appears that supplementation may be an ineffective tool for recovering depressed populations of wild fish. Such depressed populations appear to respond weakly to the addition of more spawners if they are hatchery fish (Figure 4). In addition, a byproduct of the supplementation strategy is a decline in the genetic fitness of wild fish. Although the magnitude of this fitness decline is not large when the level intervention is low (-3.9% when Ph = 0.10), it rapidly increases once the resulting proportion of hatchery fish becomes greater than 0.50 (Figure 6).

The results of this study suggest that naturally spawning hatchery fish, regardless of broodstock origin and quality, are ineffective at producing offspring that survive to adulthood. The observation that hatchery fish from .semi-domesticated. and .wild-type. hatchery broodstocks have essentially the same reproductive success makes a genetic explanation of this observation more difficult. It would seem that the .wild-type. hatchery fish should be genetically more similar to the local wild fish. Therefore, they should have better reproductive performance than hatchery fish from .semi-domesticated. broodstocks. However, as speculated by Reisenbichler and Rubin (1999), it is possible the genetic change that occurs as fish adapt to the hatchery environment may have more significance in terms of reproductive success in the natural environment than do the genetic shortcomings related to the geographic origin of the hatchery broodstock. Should this be the case, any genetic effect of broodstock origin may be difficult to detect.

An alternative genetic mechanism, unrelated to stock origin or selective changes, may be operating to create the reproductive differences between hatchery and wild fish. Genetic differences may arise from the common situation that returning hatchery fish are the offspring of substantially fewer parents than is the case for wild fish returning to the same basin. For example, approximately 160 fish are used annually as broodstock for the North Umpqua summer steelhead hatchery program. In contrast, the number of wild fish that spawn naturally in the North Umpqua basin is typically greater than 3,000 fish (Appendix 1). Therefore, the genetic base for the hatchery return is approximately 80 families, whereas for the wild fish it is roughly 1,500 families.

In summary, this study found that hatchery fish are poorly suited to reproduce under natural conditions and when allowed to do so have an adverse impact on the recruitment and productivity of natural steelhead populations. These results confirm the study supposition that hatchery fish are maladapted for reproductive survival in the natural environment. This confirmation is robust and applies to hatchery fish regardless of hatchery broodstock origin and various attempts to mimic the genetic and reproductive characteristics of wild fish. Further, it appears supplementation of depressed wild populations with hatchery spawners is an ineffective conservation strategy. Such efforts can be expected to yield only minor gains in the number of naturally produced recruits and cause a loss in the genetic fitness of wild fish. Therefore, the results of this study are consistent with the view that the most effective conservation role for hatcheries is one of impact avoidance, not direct intervention. It appears that limiting the proportion of hatchery fish in naturally spawning populations to less than 0.10 is an appropriate strategy to achieve this conservation role.
And there is the big one to me:
Such efforts can be expected to yield only minor gains in the number of naturally produced recruits and cause a loss in the genetic fitness of wild fish.

That is the long term risk that so many folks are willing to gamble with.
I've been saying it for years!
But they want their hatchery broodstock fish and are willing to gamble away our wild steelhead.

And there is other science available on broodstock besides the Hood River and Mark Chilcote that I posted above.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this day & age we can't duplicate wild production in a hatchery.
 
#46 ·
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/skeena/fish/skeena_reports/sk141.pdf

Todd, please give us your sermon on the following facts.

The Chilliwack river hatchery captures 70 wild Steelhead, they LIVE spawn them(all released to the Fraser after) and raise them to smolts in the hatchery. These fish are then released at select locations very low on the system. This produces between 2500-3500 returning hatchery broodstock Steelhead.

The wild fish return at numbers of 3000- 5000 fish and produce about the same returning Steelhead numbers 3000- 5000 adults.
These numbers are stable and have been for many years.

Taking the numerous Canadian studies on the effects of hatchery brood programs, how can this be a bad thing. Especially when we consider the on going habitat **** and destruction in the river valleys we are talking about.

Take a long hard look at the Vancouver island situation, because leaving the wild Steelhead to do their thing there has pretty much seen the total collapse of one of the greatest Steelhead areas the planet has ever known. Washington is settting itself up for the same scenario.
Give the government the option to do nothing and you will have just that nothing.
Protecting wild Steelhead in rivers that have remaining good habitat and wild stocks is obvious to all of us.
But preaching about doing nothing and actually believing that we can slow down our pillage of the environment is a pipe dream and setting your children up for a life of bass fishing.

How was the Skagit last year Todd??. About as good as The Thompson I bet. Closed fisheries are the legacy of doing nothing.
 
#49 ·
Rod, that's the worse kind of program...you have no idea how many are returning, you have no idea how many are spawning, you have no idea how many fish those spawning hatchery fish are returning, you have no idea how many of them are spawning with wild fish...and you have no idea what effects that program may be having on the wild run.

The same "proof" that I hear from the guides around here...anecdotal evidence that "it works"...period...no facts, no numbers, no studies, no nothing...just more harvest opportunities, so it "works".

Skagit will have nearly 8000 wild fish this year, and even last year when it didn't open it had twice as many as you get in the Chilliwack. It'll have more this winter than the Thompson has seen in the last six years combined.

I'll take that just fine.

Fish on...

Todd
 
#50 ·
The only thing worse than a program that actually collects data and shows that it's just converting wild fish into hatchery fish and potentially messing up the gene pool is a program that collects no data whatsoever and just keeps plugging along...

Fish on...

Todd
 
#51 ·
And again, I think if you managed a river for wild fish only, more folks would be interested in habitat restoration.
That is where I dissagreed with Bill.
I myself am not interested in habitat restoration if you are polluting the river with artificial hatchery fish.
Seems like a lost cause to me and counter productive.
What good does it do to improve habitat if you're only going to depress those same wild fish by choking them out with hatchery fish?
 
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