Tag out!

[jbird]

So what are we arguing about? I forgot.

This thread is about to hit a 4th page on a controversial issue and it has remained 100% civil. How do you do it folks? BRAVO! This thread wouldntve made it past 3 posts on most other forums. I really like your post "oceansunfish".

I would think the inherent hazard of trying to spawn wild fish in a natural setting like you suggested is. It would be impossible to control an unattended redd in an otherwise wild environment. Fish instictively know how, where and when to place their roe after they have instictively built a redd. I would think the percentage of error in trying to replicate this would be very high.

To Everyone..
I am not proclaiming that hatchery fish are the equivelant to a ravenous cancer that will contaminate everything they touch. I love them and I'm glad we have them. Without them, many rivers would be closed to protect the wild stock that is deminishing due to so many adversities.
The message I want to say is that its Okay to tag hatchery fish. I have gotten a few derogatory comments in the past regarding the taking of a hatchery fish. It is really from a lack of education I believe. Absolutely release ALL your fish if you feel led to do so. (I will try to tag a few more, but I will continue to release most. I would rather another angler have a chance at it than it sit in my freezer for a year). But know that it is Okay to bring a fish home to the family sometimes

Thanks everyone for keeping this one on the civil side of the fence =D>

Jay

[MSP]

Done

[Finsane]

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. I have learned a considerable amount. When the thread first started up I was on one side of the fence and now I'm on the other(kinda). I see both sides and understand the other side better now.

If you want to catch 98% wild fish, guys I have 1 word for you, KLAMATH. I can't remember the last hatchery fish I landed on that river.

[danb]

I dont have a solid education in Biology or Darwinism, and it seems to me that you dont either. It seems to me that the reason you are confused is you dont have a thorough understanding of Darwin.

Their is nothing corrupt about the DNA, it is just that positive traits are passed along in wild fish, and random traits are passed along in hatchery fish.

Like Ron & I agree on, I still really want to hear the biological evidence and the explanation for the the dilution of the wild gene pool. Any other example in nature shows that more variability results in a stronger hybridized individual (mutt dogs vs. purebreds) and a smaller gene pool results in quite the opposite (cheetahs).

Although I have taken in and believe everything else that has been said, at this point I'm thinking that the gene pool ideology may be falsified and could be a general misconception.

Until tomorrow

[SuinBruin]

Two quick points.

First, spawning in a hatchery fails to take into account the selectivity in spawning in the wild. I.e., in a natural setting, the most robust and dominant males and females will seek to spawn with each other, which will have an obvious effect on the genome of their offspring. Hatcheries combine milt and roe more or less at random, which negates this key component of natural selection.

Second, survivability in downriver migration and at sea is only one component of a steelhead's adaptation and suitability to its environment. Fish born in the wild have to survive what is arguably the most dangerous phase of their lives as alevin and fry, whereas hatchery fish don't face the same hazards and "weeding out" process. Hatchery fish are thus given a leg up on survival that they haven't "earned," and therefore traits that are less desireable for the alevin/fry/smolt stages (which would be selected against in the wild) can easily be passed along by hatchery fish. Indeed, having large numbers of steelhead be born and bred in a hatchery will tend to select for traits that are advantageous in the hatchery environment but harmful in the wild -- a tendency to crowd, to be more surface-oriented (and therefore more subject to predation by birds, otters, humans), etc.

[Covelo]

The majority of natural selection occurs in the first 12 months of a salmonids life. I cannot support the value, but I have always heard 90% of selection occurs during the first year which makes sense since survivability is less than 10% for many species during their first year. So the greatest factors that make a wild steelhead what it is are removed by a hatchery and replaced with runways, pelleted food and nets to keep the birds off them. Pretty cozy stuff where the only thing a fingerling really needs to worry about is his neighbor nipping his fins. For hatcheries that spawn mainly or solely hatchery returners, you can compound this deviant selection pressure by however many generations the hatchery has been in existence. Therefore, the product you get likes to swim around on the surface waiting for pellets to fall out of the sky while birds and other predators (striped bass) pound them. That is why hatchery fish have lower return rates than naturally spawned fish. Basically, offspring of naturally spawning hatchery fish survive poorly in the river because they have missed several generations of selection for fitness in freshwater. Selection in the ocean does not substitute for selection in the river. Just means you get a fish with strong ocean instincts and poor river fitness, and since 90% of motality is in the first year, fewer fish are going to reach the ocean.

As for making rivers like the American all C&R, there is no need for a hatchery on any river that is totally C&R. Hatcheries have a negative effect on naturally spawned fish as I explained above. Hatchery fingerlings also compete for food resources in the river and bay after they are released. When they dump hundreds of thousands of hatchery fry on top of a system already saturated with wild fry, the only outcome for the wild fish is negative. The idea that the American River can survive without the hatchery is questionable. There just is not that many miles or near enough surface area of river to sustain that large of a run. Throw in the degraded condition of the system and the often deadly water temperatures during the late summer period and you have a run on its way to extinction without the hatchery constantly chipping in stray spawners.

As someone else mentioned, this is really an academic discussion since the stock of fish in the American is not native due to releases of Eel River stock after the construction of the dams. Therefore we are having an discussion about whether it is OK to retain a non-native hatchery fish bred solely for take by fishermen, instead of releasing it and further polluting the gene pool of a non-native run of steelhead that we are treating like a native and truely wild population, but know are not. Tell me again why the limit on the American is only one and why we are protecting the non-native naturally spawned fish, some of which are probably the offspring of lower quality, river spawning hatchery fish themselves.

[jhaquett]

Hey Covelo,

Thanks a lot for the information you have cleared up some more info for me. I am aware that fish have type 3 life curves, where there is a large numer of offspring reared and little are expected to survive. I did NOT realize that they are kept in cozy situations during this time. That really gives a serious advantage to the hatchery steelhead!

DanB,

I'm a semester away from a BS in Biological Sciences. You certainly don't have a solid foundation in biology, I would be surprised if you could define the word. Wild fish only pass on positive traits and hatchery fish pass random traits? If you want to go ahead with that theory you're going to be challening any other genetic theory every made in the history of biology! Please do me a favor and at least look up the terms genetics, meiosis, and independent assortment before you EVER make a statement like that again.

JBird,

Overall I agree with you and thanks for posting this thread. I'm sorry but you spoke too soon of the civility of this thread, we had a nice thing going but education time is over and I think this thread is going to turn over to people like danb. I'm done with this one. Thanks for all of the education though to everyone who attributed some awesome information.

[bigtj]

Some of these comments are getting too personal. I suggest we all drop this thread and go out there and do some fishing.

[ycflyfisher]

I spend a lot to time each year visiting with the well-intentioned people at DF&G down at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery. I ask A LOT of questions every y ea r of the staff, biologists, and game wardens. Here’s what they have to say:

The amount of eggs taken each year by DF&G is determined in advance from data obtained in previous years. When they’ve reached their quota, the artificial spawning of hatchery steelhead ceases. Sometimes this occurs in the spring, but I’ve seen them shut down in December! So they never take “as much as possible”.

Very interesting thread.

What you've described above is fairly common, and in past decades, even more so. The main fisheries related goal of the hatchery manager is and has always been to reach their egg quota so they can meet their production quota. This places more emphasis on the early component of the run progression in years where the return is average or above, and on the later portion of the progression on years when the return is low. In very general terms, hatcheries lead to a phenomenon know as run compression. What you (again, in very general terms) get is a run progression that's somewhat frontloaded since the emphasis is placed on the earlier arrving fish, and too a lesser degree, the later arriving fish. Hatcheries tend to be good at preserving the run timing characteristics of the earliest portion of the run progression that begins pounding at the boards when they have the proper facilities and evironmental conditions that limits in hatchery mortality and allows them to successfully begin harvesting the spawn. This creates a condition where even if there were never any large or lengthy out of basin transfers and the hatchery strain is largely exhibiting the genetic markers of the native strain, hatcheries for the most part (again in very general terms) aren't usually preserving all the adapatbility in something as simple as run timing, let alone the more important survivability aspects present in the native strain.

They’ll also tell you 90% of ALL returning fish spawn naturally in the river system.

I wouldn't disagree with this statement.

In other words, DF&G supplements the existing population to the tune of 10%, or very little, and in fact, is not needed at all for the purpose of sustaining what they consider a healthy population of steelhead! "

I'd totally disagree with this one. Just because a great deal of the hatchery fish are spawning in basin, certainly that's not where most of the returning fish are originating. They're coming from the hatchery. Again, I've never spent any deal of time fishing the American, but I'd wager a guess that 90 percent of the stream born fish are caught either early in the run progression or very late in the run progression and are largely in the one salt size range. Simply because of the fact that those are characteristic of the largely VA strain of the hatchery and IF the first arrivers spawn early enough for emergence to occur before the latter arriving Chinooks start tearing up the limited amount of substrate present on the A you're going to see some instream production from those first arriving fish. Likewise, the later arriving (also predominantly single salt) fish probably are responsible for the bulk of the instream production on the A due to the very limited amount of suitable substrate and the fact that they get the last crack at it. I could be totally off base here, but I'd predict that 80+ percent of the wild fish above 10" caught in the A get caught either early on, or in the spring and aren't in the multisalt size range.

Therefore, a reasonable argument can be made that harvesting hatchery steelhead hurts nothing, because they’ll make more, whether it’s needed or not. From this level of knowledge, it doesn’t bother me in the least to see someone keeping a hatchery steelhead. The argument that retaining a hatchery steelhead is hurting the population of returnable fish is, well, not valid. Hatchery reared steelhead from Nimbus are like chickens, turkeys or cows or any other artificially bread animal.

Totally agree.

I guess I just don’t see how the existence or interbreeding of a hatchery fish with a wild fish hurts the wild population by “diluting” the gene pool to a level I should be concerned with. So, once again, I’m with jhaquett when it comes to wanting to know more about this aspect of the wild v hatchery issue.

Maybe more basic than what you're looking for but here ya go:

http://www.coastrange.org/salmon&survivalpg1.html
Salmon & Survival

[ycflyfisher]

If the Feds and State are really concerned about mitigating the effects of dams and want to see the occupants of the river systems be 100% wild in nature, then I believe we would see a program geared more towards actually placing eggs directly into the river to hatch in lieu of hatcheries.

This has been tried extensively and exclusively when the hatchery concept was first applied to anadramous fishes. It simply doesn't work. It isn't the fact that the fish are spawned artifically that allows for hatchery fish to develop to the point of returning, but that they are artifically grown to the stage and dumped into the river just prior to where smoltification and outmigration occurs. I.e. hatcheries insure abnormally high rates of survival in the early stages of life from emergence to outmigration, when mortality is the highest.