Now according to one of the hatchery managers on the cascade those clipping machines save alot of manpower but they are not as efficient as the people they hire to do it. (Mind you, this was a couple of years ago so there may have been technolocal advancements since then)

The machines will only take a certain size of smolt... anything over or under is rejected, to be clipped by hand anyway. The machines have more partialy clipped fins and believe it or not their not as fast their human counterparts. Not one to one faster but you get a group of people together and they can burn thru a pile of smolts quicker than the machine.

someone correct me if I'm speaking of outdated machinery...