Hatchery makes plans to breed bigger fish

Yes, humans can replace all the evolutionary factors that shape a strain of fish simply by "picking the big ones". Who would have thought it was so easy, nature isn't even needed when we have the wonder of a hatchery.
 
The reality of our salmon fisheries in Washington and BC (whether you like hatcheries or not) is that we would have only a fraction of the salmon we have now if it wasn't for hatcheries. In short, our rec fishing opportunities would be greatly restricted if there were no hatcheries. Case in point, the vast majority of salmon caught in the Juan de Fuca straight between Oct-Apr. are Wash. State hatchery fish. THANK YOU Washington State!

If we are going to have enough fish for the First Nations, Commercial, Recreational and endangered Southern Resident Orcas we need more hatchery fish until the time we can convince our various govt's to do more to help out the natural runs in the Fraser River.
 
From the article:

"But Quinsam Hatchery manager Laurent Frisson stresses that the new program is not just for the Tyee Club, it is strictly to get to the roots of what type of chinook can best replenish the Campbell stocks.

“It’s not about that at all, we’re trying to determine the heritability from parents to offsprings and the size thing is just one thing to look at,” he said. “The reason we’re doing it is we want to find out what they inherit from whom, do they inherit it from the female or from the male, does it even happen? You look at the Campbell system and the way the Campbell system is; we’re trying to produce a fish that can thrive in the Campbell and that ain’t no small fish.

“If you look at it naturally, the smaller adults would not be able to dig appropriate redds, and nature would take care of it. We’re not trying to produce fish for a particular club or a particular group.”

And, yes, the small, short, little Campbell is such, with heavy water flows, in-river habitat and larger spawning redd gravel, that it favours larger fish
."
 
I hear often from the Conservation lobby - and rightly so - about the potential impacts of introgression - and the effects that blind historical hatchery outplanting has had on the fitness of native stocks. I agree.

Things like gradual reductions in size at return have been our first observations of expressed pheneotypic genetic changes before we had this DNA technology - whether those changes were initiated through fishing gear (e.g. commercial gillnet sizes, or sport-caught Tyee-focusing trolling), or hatchery operations.

I see this issue beginning to be addressed through now novel techniques - such as new DNA methods like this "Parental Based Tagging" as discussed in the article. I can see if this type of methodology is adopted by most hatcheries - the stock assistance component of their work being more finely tuned and less risky wrt introgression. I see this as a tool to determine measures of success wrt genetics/introgression issues.

I also see other spin-offs such as determining better hatchery protocol wrt fertilization, and size/time of release - as you can follow cohorts, and/or different batches of both cohorts and broodstock. It would be nice to see the elimination of hatcheries as wild stocks rebound - if/when that happens - but in the interim - I think this new technology shows promise for understanding and mitigating hatchery impacts.
 
I gave my daughter an Ancestry.com kit for Christmas. It cost around $100.00. It would have been good to give folks an idea of the cost of processing 800,000 samlon samples.
 
agreed, Cuttle. Should be in te $10-25 range each sample...
 
I think this project is a huge step forward with regards to selecting breeding stock at hatcheries. As already mentioned the cost would seem to be a limiting factor for widespread use at all of our provinces hatchery facilities. The results should provide very useful information in the future. It may take a while before the information results in positive size improvements. The DNA information should allow a targeted breeding program to take place without severely narrowing the strains gene pool through selective breeding. That should be far better than just blindly matching the largest returning stock for breeding. Definitely a huge improvement if the funding is available to maintain this kind of program.
 
Looking forward to catching and eating the results.
After all that is the wanted end result.
 
I hear often from the Conservation lobby - and rightly so - about the potential impacts of introgression - and the effects that blind historical hatchery outplanting has had on the fitness of native stocks. I agree.

This run has been a factory run for so long this is unfortunately too little too late. The inbreeding of this run is well established from generations of inbreeding. While the process has some potential for mitigating future inbreeding, the Campbell run is no longer anything like the run that produced those tyees, and never can be again unless the hatchery was removed and the run was allowed to re-evolve. Politically that never happens, once the river is turned into a smolt factory, there is no going back.
 
Still in these days of hatchery 15-25# wind-ups, the occasional 50# + fish does show up in the Campbell.
 
"...once the river is turned into a smolt factory, there is no going back. "

And once the dam was built, the choice was hatchery fish or stand by-- do nothing and watch the run go extinct. Thanks-- but I prefer a 20lber to a NO lber.
 
The dam was and is not the problem as such. It was and is B.C. Hydro and Dept. Fisheries.
I have lived in Campbell River for 35 yrs. There were 3500-5000 Chinook spawning in those days. The hatchery started a program for Chinook production. Hydro blew out the spawning area in the Campbell that the Chinook used. Gravel has been placed in areas never used by any salmon. Dept. of Fisheries has screwed with this system in numerous ways.

Quinsam river never had a return of Chinook. They are all hatchery generated.

When you turn as many hatchery fish loose in the spring, many more than the natural numbers, as a hatchery does, what do they eat? What is left for the natural fry?

When the enhanced stocks are targeted by the commercial fleet, do they only take hatchery fish?

As long as the Dept of Fisheries allows the uncontrolled commercial harvest presently in place, we will continue to see a decline in salmon stocks.

Playing with the genetics of salmon is just one more way to screw with "mother nature". RHB will turn over in his grave.
 
We need to have release regs on Tyee size fish, and commercial netting of Chinooks has to be stopped, to ever see a reversal of constantly declining sizes. No pain, no gain. It's that simple.
 
The problem with what they are attempting is that some of the smaller fish sometimes called jacks, are genetically superior to the average sized fish, this allows them to be more successful in the wild and reach a stage of maturity to spawn a year earlier than most of the population and therefore return to spawn smaller. this was naturally evolved to help replace failed runs due to natural barriers such as the slides that eliminated the alternate year pink runs.

If these fish had returned in their normal or expected spawning year they would be larger than average. selecting the genetics of the larger fish that return ultimately decreases the systems ability to recover from failed spawning years as well as eliminates the heritable potential of the superior genetics of the early spawning smaller fish.

This isn't the answer
 
Jacks are an interesting topic. They have obviously been a component of the population dynamics long before any human stock assistance intervention. I have heard a number of hypothesis offered as to their potential greater role in maintaining the health/diversity of salmon stocks - but I really don't think we truly understand their role. Just as a clarification - pinks have a 2yo life history (even, or odd years) - and don't have jacks.
 
The dam was and is not the problem as such. It was and is B.C. Hydro and Dept. Fisheries.
I have lived in Campbell River for 35 yrs. There were 3500-5000 Chinook spawning in those days. The hatchery started a program for Chinook production. Hydro blew out the spawning area in the Campbell that the Chinook used. Gravel has been placed in areas never used by any salmon. Dept. of Fisheries has screwed with this system in numerous ways.

Quinsam river never had a return of Chinook. They are all hatchery generated.

When you turn as many hatchery fish loose in the spring, many more than the natural numbers, as a hatchery does, what do they eat? What is left for the natural fry?

When the enhanced stocks are targeted by the commercial fleet, do they only take hatchery fish?

As long as the Dept of Fisheries allows the uncontrolled commercial harvest presently in place, we will continue to see a decline in salmon stocks.

Playing with the genetics of salmon is just one more way to screw with "mother nature". RHB will turn over in his grave.

No... the dam IS the major problem. And there are others. And as far as DFO "screwing" with the system.. and placing gravel in areas never used by any salmon ???? On several occasions I have seen Mother Nature kick the hell out of a river during flood events-- completely rechanneling -- and leaving the old stream bed dry. Took no time at all for salmon to move back in and utilize the new habitat. The Oyster and the Bella Coola are two that come to mind. As RHB has pointed out many time-- salmon dont generate any political brownie points. Cheap electricity does. Hence the salmon are deemed expendable by some in power.

And I give the Quinsam hatchery people full marks trying to mitigate the effects of an expanding human population on the rivers fish and trying to deal with the effects of the dam. So-- I guess you dont think much or the massive estuary rehabilitation that Salmon Foundation and DFO have undertaken either ?? If members here think my comments are harsh-- I guess they are. But I have known the managers of the Quinsam hatchery since the facility was first opened. I have sat around the lunch table and heard discussions about lack of funding, the devastating effects of leaching from the coal mine, the discussions with Hydro to get decent flows for fish at the right times of the year, the struggle to figure out proper release timing of smolts or fry to take advantage of marine plankton blooms-- and the list goes on. I KNOW how dedicated they were, and are, to doing the best for the salmon in the hatchery and the rivers. Things are substantially better now with more awareness , and Hydro does listen to a degree. If you feel that you wish to provide more input to what is happening on the Campbell/Quinsam system, here is your chance

http://fwcp.ca/coastal-action-plan-campbell-river-watershed/
 
Jacks are an interesting topic. They have obviously been a component of the population dynamics long before any human stock assistance intervention. I have heard a number of hypothesis offered as to their potential greater role in maintaining the health/diversity of salmon stocks - but I really don't think we truly understand their role. Just as a clarification - pinks have a 2yo life history (even, or odd years) - and don't have jacks.

True but if you apply the benefits of the portfolio effect that has been shown in the large Alaskan sockeye systems to jacks having a similar role in spreading genetic diversity and allowing recovery of poor years In certain tributaries it makes sense for jacks to have a similar role in species such as chinooks whose spawning habitat isn't as diverse with many tiny streams within a single system as sockeye.
 
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