C
c.r.angler
Guest
quote:Originally posted by Barbender
I am not discrediting my self, I am only being honest. Ask yourself how many salmon would be swimming on the west coast right now if it weren't for hatchery programs. Also the gene pool of the salmon out there is so diluted and screwed up that it will never recover completely. Every major producing salmon area on the entire west coast of N America is supported by one or several hatcheries. That should tell you something. No spin involved....this is the truth.
Depends...is Monica part of the deal?quote: Hey Barbender, you ever thought of going down south and working for the Clintons
While hatcheries vastly supplement depressed wild stocks, they have not been "gone for the most part for 30 years" That's what I was calling you on. I do agree that many wild stocks are in trouble, but they are not all gone. Sorry to jump on you over it, but when I hear a comment like that it makes me think that we have given up on whats left of our wild stocks. There is no way it's time to give up on them. There is still much that can be done to reverse the downward trends.
Here's my opinion on the current situation...The fact is, huge influxes of hatchery raised young salmon don't do the wild fish any favours. They compete for food habitat ect...Hatcheries were first created to suppliment the commercial fleet. One of the major flaws with that was that they still continued to fish mixed stocks. So when you have this artificial excess of hatchery salmon, DFO allowed huge alowable catches to reflect those expected escapments. At the same time, the wild stocks were bieng chiseled away with no replenishment. You've got to think, a healthy wild stock of coho in a small creek might only be 500-1000 fish total. One unlucky set from a seiner in Johnson Straight could wipe out the entire run from that system. As far a the gene pool being diluted and screwed up, sure in those hatchery systems and maybe some nearby wild systems...you could be correct. But how does that affect the rest of the wild stock? Honestly, IMO, the whole logic of relying on hatcheries as the savior of our salmon is flawed. I don't deney that we need them at this piont, but we really need to concentrate on rebuilding and conserving our wild stocks.