I know I am opening a can of worms here, but I'm trying to get things clear in my head.

I actually have a number of questions, so feel free to jump in.

(1) What constitutes a hatchery-raised fish?

The reason I ask is because to me, hatchery-raised fish are those that are raised to something larger that fry-size, i.e., pen-fed fish in rearing ponds. I don't regard hatching eggs and planting fry as hatchery-raised. To me all that constitutes is giving the brood stock a better chance at reproducing. Does that weaken a fish? How does it damage anything to plant fry in the water systems? It would seem to me that if the dispersal of fry is well planned and spread out, and that if hatchery-borne diseases are closely monitored, that the numbers of wild fish could be greatly and quickly increased, and at a much lower cost. I have heard and read about egg-hatching protective cages buried in selected spots designed to do the same thing. How are these working out?

Here's a compromised-gene-pool question. Have there been studies done to determine which genes are dominate and which are recessive (or is it regressive?) in fish? I don't know the answer to this, but it seems to me that the dominate genes would be the ones associated with all of the necessary survival characteristics, and will nearly always predominate in a mix of "hatchery and wild" fish. Like a blue-eye, brown-eye cross nearly always produces a brown eye.

Is there documented evidence of damage to wild fish populations by hatchery-raised fish? I have heard an awful lot of selective and subjective theology (whatever happened to science objectivity? ). I am not impressed with the uprooted spawn theory or the too many fish in a river theory, as there are numerous rivers in Alaska that have so many fish in them every year that the eddys are filled with uprooted spawn. Yet those rivers continue to produce massive numbers of fish. I'm guessing that if the fish-demand for food exceeds the river's capability to provide, then some of the fry die off and provide food for the remaining fry? The DNA thing can no longer be argued as well, since both wild and hatchery fish can not be shown to be genetically different. (Who the Hell is responsible for lending credibility to that creative science?