Can someone explain the government's reluctance to....

[ericl]

Primarily driven by the Salmon rec fishers target most; Chinook & Coho:
If all one is interested in is the survival of existing wild Salmon runs, then hatcheries are bad. If all one is interested in is more fish to catch or having it be OK to destroy the environment then hatcheries are bad. Two extremes with lot's of middle ground opinions. The "we can build a dam & put a hatchery below the dam" started on the Columbia river in the mid 1800's. Got us into trouble. Dams are an example of many types of environmental damage. The "we can pump out millions of hatchery fish and allow large harvests of both abundant hatchery fish mixed-in with small numbers of scarce wild fish" is where we are at today. Down here in Puget Sound rec fishers can only retain hatchery fish, & the only commercial harvest is by the tribes, so w/o hatcheries we would have no rec fishing. The total catch of hatchery fish is determined by how many incidental mortalities of wild fish while releasing them can be tolerated. This practice is not working; looks like habitat restoration is required.

 

[fish brain]

Science, which has shown time and again hatcheries cause more harm than good.

With the billions of salmon being pumped out into the North Pacific as “Ocean Ranching” by Alaska, Russia, Korea and Japan many studies have recently been published, and some posted here, that strongly suggest that there are just too many juvenile and sub-adult fish competing for too few groceries. When smolt to adult recruitment is low, the surviving fish would historically be large and fat or, conversely, if smolt to adult recruitment was high you’d see smaller size/ condition factor due to natural competition. This cycle we’re seeing now of low returns and small, poorly conditioned fish is a direct sign of poor ocean conditions and/or too much competition.

Pumping even more fish into a failing system is exactly the opposite of what should be happening.

Cheers!

Ukee

I'm on the side of lack of food / poor ocean conditions. growing up as a kid in Campbell River we could expect to see a herring boil when we went out fishing. Most people carried a herring rake or jigs, so that when they came across one they could harvest some. How often do you see one mid summer that you could stop and harvest some now? As I mentioned in another post I know of two people who lived near the Cowichan River in the early 1900's talking about the noise of the fish in the bay, one who lived at least half a kilometer from the bay used to know it was time to go fishing when he could hear the fish from his farm. Our rivers and ocean can suppoert waaaayyyyy more fish. It's a matter of restoring their habitat

 

[dmurph]

I think cutting back on the commercial herring fishing a bit more could really help the salmon stocks, and therefore the resident whales. Gotta start at the bottom. I believe but not super education on the matter that the herring fishing was cut back a few years back and the fishing in the straight and in particular seems to have improved. Improvement in bait fish, getting nets out of the rivers and a little enhancement via hatcheries could have all user groups including the whales in a much better position.

 

[Powerset]

Science and economics. As Ukee mentions there is extensive research on degradation of the genetic diversity of the stocks due to inbreeding and studies showing survival of naturally spawned smolts is much higher than tank raised ones. Long term viability of a stock is not maintained by inbreeding them and taking away the natural selection forces that helped them evolve and adapt to changing conditions. Economics as they have tried increases in production with minimal increases or even decreases in returns before. The most successful system as far as rebuilding chinook runs is the Cowichan, and runs are increasing there despite a large reduction in chinook smolt output. In the 1990s the egg take was 3 million eggs, the target now is 700,000, and there are maximum targets for % of the fish going to brood stock and the total return of hatchery fish. Overall smolt survival fell to 0.5% at its worst. Flooding millions of pellet fed tank raised smolts into an estuary may be good for the seals, mergansers, gulls, sculpins, rockfish hake and anything else that eats them, but not so good for the taxpayer.

agreed, the best solutions are rebuilding damaged ecosystems and unfortunately taking less fish.The governments do a better job of resource management but FUNDING is still woefully low.Habitat restoration takes billions of dollars and fish can’t talk so it’s up to us to demand accountability. I have always said that CLISURE us the cheapest form of fishery management.That’s usually just a cop out from governments that don’t see our fishery as worthy of huge investment, but anglers are a healthy sized voting block, so if we get all the relevant info posted here we can make better choices in our politicians. I still don’t know what the province is spending on enhancements and habitat restoration in BC, it’s time we found out. Our government needs to help in a bug way

 

[wildmanyeah]

Hatcheries circa 1891, think of the amount of people in the provence at the time and the amount of work hatcheries were doing, Great read!

https://books.google.com/books?id=WwtAAQAAMAAJ&lpg=RA4-PA46&ots=QPmtgsX6YG&dq=Pen traps fraser river&pg=RA4-PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[GLG]

This has been showing up on my twitter feed for the last few days .... so something is happening. Not sure if it's enough but it is way better than the past complete cluster that the previous government did.
https://twitter.com/DFO_Pacific

 

[Bent-Tip]

Yes, nice to see some habitat/enhancement funding being sprinkled about.

 

[UkeeDreamin]

Alaska Sport Fishing Groups Fight Boost toHatchery Production

http://www.newsminer.com/news/local...cle_e6ef0d16-5c06-11e8-b949-dbe155e70f12.html

Rallying against the production of 100s of millions of pink fry to be released into prince William Sound due to impacts on native poulations

Cheers!

Ukee

 

[bones]

Alaska Sport Fishing Groups Fight Boost toHatchery Production

http://www.newsminer.com/news/local...cle_e6ef0d16-5c06-11e8-b949-dbe155e70f12.html

Rallying against the production of 100s of millions of pink fry to be released into prince William Sound due to impacts on native poulations

Cheers!

Ukee

this boost in prey has complimented the salmon shark population as well. now they are catching them closer and further inland than before (suggests a high population) . there are studies underway to understand the effects of overpopulating the ocean with PRoduction.