After the great hatchery returns this year and then the slow return of our natives one has to wonder

I just spent three weeks at the quilicene National salmon hatch clipping addys to get a look inside.

CF, you are right about getting a the state or the US people dierectly involved in the hatcheries to give you the whole picture.I think it is a mix of old school and job preservation.

There is nothing in the hatchery program to prepare a hatch fish for wild survival.There is nothing to recreate a river in its natural state exept water current.No cover, wild food,wild predation,and way to much human intervention.The hatchery fish have become pets of sorts for the first part of there life.I am sure that after generations of breeding and being raised in the hatchery envirement that the weeker fish have become the prominant fish.The reasons are obvious and have been stated before.

I think that the fin clipping process adds to this scenario even more.When you are a kid you dread going to the doctor for a shot as you are generally deathly afraid of getting a shot.As you grow older you get used to getting a shot and it becomes easiar...

I tried once as a kid to put wild fish into an aquarium in my bedroom.This aqariaum was a long fifty gallon with a pump for current and substrate from the creek that I grew up on and the smolt came from.The first batch that I put into the aquarium jumped out the first night.I put a top on the aquarriaum and added some more.All I heard all night was
thump...thump..of the fish trying to get out of there.Putting a wild fish fry straight into a hatchery enviro is going against all its instincts.It would surely suffer if not die from the stress.

I talked to a bio on the op this week that had an interesting point concerning hatchery fish actually raising the natural predator population by not having the wild survival instincts.Abundant,easy food is going to suport a larger population.

I dont think that the fish are adapting to a hatchery as much as the fish with the weaker survival instincts have survived and the fish with th strongest survival instincts have not been able to handle the stress of the hatchery enviro.You walk up to a raceway full of the coho smolt and the fish would swim right up to you hoping for food...scary.Cast your shadow on a wild smolt and it will bolt for cover.A fish with those instincts cannot survive in a hatchery.If it does it has lost a crucial reaction for survival in the wild.

I do agree that they do have the ability to adapt back to a wild enviro though as I have seen a hatchery run become a wild run on my home stream.They have diferant behavior patterns from the wild fish in the stream that clearly reflect there hatchery rearing in there instincts.I can't seem to find a state bio that wants to have anything to do with this,they do not even want to talk about it..funny.

With present purpose of hatchery fish how much do we actually want to change this present scenario?I see the present purpose of hatchery fish as a subsidy to supply the demand of our ever growing population.We have more people wanting less and less fish.As our wild stocks decline and become extinct the role of the hatchery fish will change.That is where the facts from discusions like these will become important.Of course it will take a billion dollars of studys to discover these answers!