Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- hatchery salmon
From: James Smith (jbosmith at gmail.com)
Date: Tue Oct 12 2004 - 16:32:12 CDT
The biggest problem with the salmon stocking program in the CT river
is the fishermen in Long Island Sound that catch them a mile away from
where the Connecticut dumps into it. It's legal to take them from the
ocean. If you measure their population going into this area, they are
doing well. Very few make it back, though. They pull them out as fast
as they can and stack them in piles on the beach until they leave. At
some point I'll stop and get the survival numbers for each stage of
life if I think about it.
American Shad which also went extinct at the same time when all the
dams were built in Mass were restocked using the same methods and have
been so successful that you can now catch them legally with a normal
license. You don't get $15 for a shad fillet though.
Restocking back in the 80s had some major issues such as they were
using eggs from landlock salmon which are the same species but
wouldn't migrate when put back in the river systems. They also
released them later in their life cycle and the fish did not get the
imprint of the river so that they could get back or something like
that. I don't know exactly how it works.
I'll never be convinced that trying to restock salmon is a bad idea. I
will however say that before it can be overly successful the
commerical benefits for harvesting them need to go away or more likely
restrictions need to be put in place where they are caught from the
ocean.
A lot of my knowledge on this comes from what I remember from high
school biology and natural science classes as well as the various
signs around where I live now, so it's not very scientific and if
something sounds off kilter it probably is. :-) My main point is that
even a flawed restocking program is better than an exhibit of what
used to be in a museum somewhere years down the road.
Jim
On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:51:52 -0400, Bruce Stallsmith
<fundulus at hotmail.com> wrote:
> You're in Vermont, right? The efforts to restock Atlantic salmon in the
> Connecticut River system have had notoriously poor results. Much of the
> analysis as to why has to do with genetics, since salmon populations show
> evidence of being micro-adapted to their natal streams and rivers. Like Dave
> McNeely said, the evidence for this has been allozyme analysis, looking at
> different proteins the fish are producing based on their genetic make-up.
> Since Connecticut River-system salmon pretty much disappeared by the Civil
> War because of river damning, more northerly populations have been used
> without much effect. I spent a Saturday years ago watching river fish run up
> through the Holyoke (MA) Dam in the glassed-in run. Plenty of alewifes,
> blueback herring, striped bass and even lampreys but we only saw 2 salmon.
> This was 5 or 6 years into the effort of the 1980s to restore that run. I
> think a total of 880 salmon were viewed that year, 1988 (I think). And now
> the surviving runs in Maine rivers are federally listed, kinda like shutting
> the barn door after the horse is gone.
>
> --Bruce Stallsmith
> The glamourous Tennessee drainage
> Huntsville, AL, US of A
>
> >From: James Smith <jbosmith at gmail.com>
> >Reply-To: nanfa-l at nanfa.org
> >To: nanfa-l at nanfa.org
> >Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- hatchery salmon
> >Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:24:05 -0400
> >
> >All salmon stocking that I know of are released as tiny little fry
> >directly out of the hatching trays. They are hatched in river water
> >with similar chemistry as where they're released, provided current
> >with spray bars, etc. The only real difference between the trays and a
> >shallow riffle is the lack of predators and the hydrogen peroxide to
> >prevent fungus. I suppose the food is dead too which might make a
> >difference, but at such a young age it's all instinct anyway...
> >
> >There's a place near the river here with a sign about the life cycle
> >of atlantic salmon. Most of them die in the 3-4 years that they are in
> >the ocean if I remember right.
> >
> >Jim
>
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: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 11:27:45 CST