Another study supports the fact that hatchery salmon and steelhead experience relatively dismal survival rates in the wild — more ammunition for advocates for wild fish (and often, dam removal).
Salmon born in captivity become domesticated in as little as one generation, a new study finds, explaining why hatchery-born fish don’t do as well as wild-born ones in Oregon rivers.
Researchers created an enormous fish family tree using genetic samples from 12,700 steelhead trout (which are in the same family as salmon) returning from the sea to Oregon’s Hood River to spawn. This fishy pedigree revealed the fish that spawned well in hatcheries had offspring that spawned poorly in the wild.
Later, the article quoted a steelhead hatchery fish survival rate only 80% that of wild fish. And the concern is that “hatchery” genes — which result in higher reproduction in hatcheries, but far lower reproduction in the wild — would suppress natural steelhead populations.
In other words, wild fish good, hatchery fish bad. On a lot of levels.
The article makes some intersting points, and is well worth a read.
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