Hatchery steelhead are dumber and less likely to survive than wild steelhead

Now that is an example of garbage science! How many fish sampled? From how many sites? At what life stages tested? How representative is this for all hatchery fish? Of course there may be the odd dudd hatchery fish just like there is the odd wild fish that has deficiencies, but this conclusion is nothing more than garbage. Don't post bs like this, not worth a second of attention, 10 min life I will never get back!
 
Now that is an example of garbage science! How many fish sampled? From how many sites? At what life stages tested? How representative is this for all hatchery fish? Of course there may be the odd dudd hatchery fish just like there is the odd wild fish that has deficiencies, but this conclusion is nothing more than garbage. Don't post bs like this, not worth a second of attention, 10 min life I will never get back!

its from 2013, why its circulated in some news feeds now, who knows
 
Not sure how to you jump to the conclusion that it is "garbage science" when the articles starts by saying the title is somewhat tongue in cheek and then goes on to explain the study and provides a link to the PLOS ONE journal which is quite reputable - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0059162

Also, I've attached a few recent PDF summaries from PSF's Salish Sea Marine Survival Program that reiterate the poor survival of hatchery salmon compared to wild salmon. Hopefully they upload for all to see. This is not to say that hatchery fish are useless or that we should shut down hatcheries because they produce inferior salmon. It's just that when and where we find differences in survival between hatchery and wild salmon we can learn and adapt future hatchery practices to better mimic wild and hopefully improve survival. Many hatcheries have already been making release timing adjustment, temp and feed adjustments, release location changes, etc for years. Nothing wrong with using science and research to inform improvements to existing hatchery practices.

Now that is an example of garbage science! How many fish sampled? From how many sites? At what life stages tested? How representative is this for all hatchery fish? Of course there may be the odd dudd hatchery fish just like there is the odd wild fish that has deficiencies, but this conclusion is nothing more than garbage. Don't post bs like this, not worth a second of attention, 10 min life I will never get back!
 

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Hatchery fish don’t have poor survival. They have a very high egg to fry rate survival. Even with poorer fresh and marine survival. The egg to fry survival is so huge it still overwhelming out produces wild fish in most cases.

There is a reason why we still have healthy hatchery fisheries while their wild counterparts have crashed. Wild fish can’t out produce hatcheries.
 
I think there is a place for hatcheries (e.g. in conjunction with habitat restoration to jump-start impacted systems). As WMY pointed-out their egg-to-fry survival is often 3-10 times that found in "nature". BUT....

I really don't think that is an appropriate metric to gauge "success" of hatcheries. Genetics is.

There can be substantial genetic changes that decreases overall survival of enhanced stocks (as tincan pointed-out). This has been substantially documented in the past 20 years or so - including this study.

I think these kinds of studies offers us an opportunity to fine-tune the hatchery operations (feeding, lights, release strategies, etc.) in order to decrease the genetic distortion and to enhance the survival and success of hatchery-produced enhanced stocks.

I believe newer technologies such as parental-based tagging and changing release strategies (trickling out releases at night, changing sizes and timing of releases, etc.) offers opportunities to find what works the best - rather than getting stuck in one narrative or another (i.e. hatcheries are either "all bad" or "all good").

I don't think anyone wants to keep wild stocks on life-support (I.E. stock enhancement) forever. Kinda like getting stuck in the emergency ward, forever.

So - how do we get out of the ER?

Maybe incorporate studies like this and change things, n'est pas?
 
I don't think anyone wants to keep wild stocks on life-support (I.E. stock enhancement) forever. Kinda like getting stuck in the emergency ward, forever.

I wish I could see a path where this would be possible but I do not see one
 
I agree it is a challenging vision to contemplate, WMY - but I think the intent of hatcheries should be to work themselves out of a job - even if that doesn't currently look possible. The goal should be to return the wild stocks to some semblance of natural self-sustaining levels - and we can certainly argue about what that might look like - but I believe that should be the stated goal.

Along with a goal should also come benchmarks - or what might be called "measures of success". I really don't think that the hatch-out rate comes anywhere's near being a benchmark. I think hatcheries should be fully supported with enough capacity to be able to develop and assess what a "measure of success" looks like and use that as a goal - rather than just pumping-out numbers and hoping for the best.

Admittedly, there are unfortunately few models of that kind - or intensity of planning and data. The Cowichan might be the only exception to that rule I can think of or know:

http://www.pacfish.ca/Cowichan/

and more on hatchery impacts:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/...n/Hatchery-Impact-on-Wild-Salmonids+Bakke.pdf
 
I agree it is a challenging vision to contemplate, WMY - but I think the intent of hatcheries should be to work themselves out of a job - even if that doesn't currently look possible. The goal should be to return the wild stocks to some semblance of natural self-sustaining levels - and we can certainly argue about what that might look like - but I believe that should be the stated goal.

Along with a goal should also come benchmarks - or what might be called "measures of success". I really don't think that the hatch-out rate comes anywhere's near being a benchmark. I think hatcheries should be fully supported with enough capacity to be able to develop and assess what a "measure of success" looks like and use that as a goal - rather than just pumping-out numbers and hoping for the best.

Admittedly, there are unfortunately few models of that kind - or intensity of planning and data. The Cowichan might be the only exception to that rule I can think of or know:

http://www.pacfish.ca/Cowichan/

and more on hatchery impacts:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/...n/Hatchery-Impact-on-Wild-Salmonids+Bakke.pdf

I agree if that is what the US, Japan and Russia all agreed to do. The cowichan is a great example of where they reduced hatchey our put along with many of changes and increased returns.
 
I agree that collectively - we need to address overstocking of the ocean. In my mind - things like watershed restoration that includes some level of (limited) stock enhancement would be a priority over ocean ranching.

Being realistic - politically - it would be a difficult, long-term process to expand something like the Pacific Salmon Treaty to Russia and Japan - if not near-impossible - although worth the effort and time.

I don't think we need to wait for this to happen in our own country, though. Using the newest tools like Parental-Based Tagging to assess different cohorts with different release strategies and different feeding & growth strategies should be instituted immediately - where possible. Same said for pairing watershed restoration - where possible.

As I said above - it all starts with a stated goal with benchmarks.... and later, data...
 
and money, of course Dave - unfortunately related to both capacity, and political will...
 
and money, of course Dave - unfortunately related to capacity, and political will...

Probably more related to the popularity of salmon VS the popularity of things like health care, climate change, education, security ect..

We have an NDP/Green government if there ever was a time in our recent history for the provence to take charge of its own habitat it would be now. Instead they put a council together lead by a commercial fishing advocate and there recommendation is more hatchery production.

so that's, that
 
This graph from the Cowichan (juvie Chinook) jumped out at me:
figure8.jpg
 
One of the major challenges salmon face is the ecosystems they live within have become increasingly compromised by human activity. We aren't about to change our ways any time soon. So things look bleak. If we stopped all efforts at enhancement and habitat improvement to offset what is happening to salmon ecosystems there would be very few salmon. For example, if we listened to the ENGO's who say the solution to providing food now for SRKW is to stop all fishing, stop hatcheries, and rely on wild salmon I'm pretty sure they would starve to death in short order. We have learning to do to adapt our approaches to make hatcheries better, and fix what we can to improve ecosystem productivity. I just don't see going full stop on hatcheries and other enhancement tools is the answer.
 
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