12-10-2010, 01:43 PM
[quote STEELHEADKID]I believe F&G does not truck surplus hatchery fish to a new place to spawn due to the fact that they may spawn with a true wild fish thus polluting the gene pool.[/quote]
But . . . that has already happened. The only way to successfully mitigate hatchery fish from interbreeding is to have the hatcheries located near the mouth of the river at the ocean. The fish are then weired allowing only the wild fish to pass upstream to breed. That way when the hatchery fish have degraded to a certain point the biologists can pull new brood stock from the wild fish population. Locating hatcheries at or close to the head waters dilutes the stock to the point that their is no "pure wild strain." With inter-river migrations, having fish that simply go home with the fish they were in the ocean with, I'm not sure if there really is a pure strain. On the Salmon I have caught steelhead with tags from other river hatcheries that have no connecting water except the ocean. It would seem that nature allows for this interbreeding or dilution as well.
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But . . . that has already happened. The only way to successfully mitigate hatchery fish from interbreeding is to have the hatcheries located near the mouth of the river at the ocean. The fish are then weired allowing only the wild fish to pass upstream to breed. That way when the hatchery fish have degraded to a certain point the biologists can pull new brood stock from the wild fish population. Locating hatcheries at or close to the head waters dilutes the stock to the point that their is no "pure wild strain." With inter-river migrations, having fish that simply go home with the fish they were in the ocean with, I'm not sure if there really is a pure strain. On the Salmon I have caught steelhead with tags from other river hatcheries that have no connecting water except the ocean. It would seem that nature allows for this interbreeding or dilution as well.
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