Frozen fish jiz

[RODNREEL]

I've been reading everyone's concerns about the Alberni and Fraser river sockeye returns and it got me thinking.With the technology and science we have today we can freeze a man's sperm indefinitely and a woman's eggs for over ten years. What about fish ?? When we have a big run we take eggs and milt and freeze them for a crappy year. I've searched the internet and found nothing on this. Is it happening and I'm in the dark ? Is it possible ? So what if it cost a few bucks we tax payers have deep pockets. If there's any info you can pass on it would be a appreciated.

 

[triplenickel]

You get a like for the title alone.

 

[wildmanyeah]

Now i know what the chum fishery was for, here i thought it was for the eggs, turns out it was for the frozen fish jiz....lol

 

[Tightlines22]

Hey maybe you are on to something! If there's a way to really pull that off, they could mix the big Adam's River run and many others over every cycle...

 

[bones]

I've been reading everyone's concerns about the Alberni and Fraser river sockeye returns and it got me thinking.With the technology and science we have today we can freeze a man's sperm indefinitely and a woman's eggs for over ten years. What about fish ?? When we have a big run we take eggs and milt and freeze them for a crappy year. I've searched the internet and found nothing on this. Is it happening and I'm in the dark ? Is it possible ? So what if it cost a few bucks we tax payers have deep pockets. If there's any info you can pass on it would be a appreciated.

pretty sure this happens already with males, buddy introduced a chinnock run on his river and stock came from squamish, via UBC.

 

[Bugs]

Great Thread title! Freezing sperm has been done since the 70s.

Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 1971, 28(5): 745-748, https://doi.org/10.1139/f71-102

The problem is that in general it is not a lack of sperm that is the issue (very little can go a long way). I am pretty sure that freezing eggs would not be practical. They are pretty fragile things.

 

[agentaqua]

In the late 1990s, WorldFish, DFO and the Oak Bay group did a bit of this - preserving frozen sperm in the gene bank managed by WesGen in Langley: http://www.worldfish.org/projects/local/past-projects?showall=&start=3

 

[Fishin'Zinn]

Feasible I think... Maybe even practical and budget friendly. Biggest hurdle I think is preserving the eggs ? Totally could scale this up to fish cleaning stations at launches etc. Egg/sperm return centers (just like we do with hatchery heads right now?), this would take some R&D... Compared to what is possible nowadays, what are the barriers to make this achievable I wonder?

Also, how can we transplant into riverbeds... I think I recall hatchery programs having these 'egg incubators' that can be used in the right river beds (Here: http://scotty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/JordanScotty_IncubatorBrochure.pdf )? Very interesting. Could be a good venture for someone. I'd like to hear what others think on this. I know a river or two I'd like to try if politics weren't an issue

EDIT: Thank you Agentaqua, Bones, California, for elaborating below. Logistics, nature, and timing makes things too difficult looks like. Learned something today


Picture of said incubator, insert into riverbed. Totally scale-able. I'd love to do this if I didn't already have a career and if it were possible to do effectively!

 

[bones]

.

Feasible I think... Maybe even practical and budget friendly. Biggest hurdle I think is preserving the eggs ? Totally could scale this up to fish cleaning stations at launches etc. Egg/sperm return centers (just like we do with hatchery heads right now?), this would take some R&D... Compared to what is possible nowadays, what are the barriers to make this achievable I wonder?

Also, how can we transplant into riverbeds... I think I recall hatchery programs having these 'egg incubators' that can be used in the right river beds (Here: http://scotty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/JordanScotty_IncubatorBrochure.pdf )? Very interesting. Could be a good venture for someone. I'd like to hear what others think on this. I know a river or two I'd like to try if politics weren't an issue


Picture of said incubator, insert into riverbed. Totally scale-able. I'd love to do this if I didn't already have a career and if it were possible to do effectively!

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The adult male needs to be milked and nothing can be done for eggs. I believe the Scotty thing has legal issues, permits and so forth.

 

[bones]

Weird....


The adult male needs to be milked and nothing can be done for eggs. I believe the Scotty thing has legal issues, permits and so forth.

 

[agentaqua]

eggs only have a few hours shelf life once removed from the females, and must be kept cold (and not unduly "shocked" wrt transport and vibration). The eggs themselves are only viable wrt fertilization when ready - but the female salmon you catch may/may not have "viable" eggs until she arrives near the spawning grounds. Some things to consider...

 

[california]

Sperm can be frozen and be viable when thawed because it can be separated into very small amounts , and the cells are very small so cryoprotectants (10% glycerol with some sucrose) are added which replaces the cell water so the cell doesn't burst. The eggs are too big to protect with the cryoprotective agents and freeze without damaging the cells.

 

[RODNREEL]

Sperm can be frozen and be viable when thawed because it can be separated into very small amounts , and the cells are very small so cryoprotectants (10% glycerol with some sucrose) are added which replaces the cell water so the cell doesn't burst. The eggs are too big to protect with the cryoprotective agents and freeze without damaging the cells.

Thank you for the info. Unfortunately it doesn't sound workable. Science can't fix everything !

 

[Cuba Libre]

The Scotty instream incubators are not practical for anything more than small school education program. The DFO Community Advisor for the upper Fraser River area worked out that to bury the eggs for ONE female chinook in an instream incubator would require a hole big enough to bury a large refrigerator. Not practical. Using a backhoe to dig that hole instream during salmon season is NOT going to get approval. However, these may have limited uses for small stream trout restoration projects.