Ah, yes. I forgot to thank you for pointing out athat strains do have chromosome number variation. An interesting point.

Nontheless, all the strains you mention have less variation than steelhead as a species (58-64) exhibits . Thus I still think the within population diveristy being equivalent to the diversity of the entire population is a bit of fruity thing to say. How can this be true unless the population is efficitively one group? I don't see how part of a population can have more diveristy than the entire population. Perhaps I am just being dense.

The other issue is how one samples diveristy. With chromosome numbers of course it is simple and I think we have hashed over the issues. You just count them.
With genomic variation it is obviously much more complex and sampling becomes a huge issue. Do you count only coding single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or do you count them all. You malign electrophoretic techniques as being outdated. Certainly they are older and can only detect functional changes, but maybe its only funcitonal changes we should concern ourselves with. There are many non-coding snps in the steelhead genome. How many nobody knows, but way more than are practical to deal with. How do you decide which are accurate measures of diversity? I seriously doubt that outside of genome wide human and mouse studies there has been any effor to catalog the most comon polymorphisms let alone assess them in individual populations. The bottom line to all this is that even assessing genetic diversity is tricky and comes down to how you sample your SNPs.


As for hatcheries not screwing up fishereis. I agree that the documentation is limited at best. However, you want us to take the absence of evidence that hatcheries have caused problems as evidence for their utility. That is a ridiculously flimsy argument.

Here is an equally flimsy counter arguement. Hatcheries were in operation in this state during the declines of most major runs of chinook, steelhead and coho. Therefore they are the cause of these declines.

I believe neither of these weak arguments. The question really is did hatcheries play any role in these declines. I believe their role wa proably minor. However, my opinion is not the end all be all. We need facts. To do that we need to conduct some experiments.

Thus as I suggested before, we should conduct this integration of hatchery and wild populations on a selcet few systems (instead of statewide) and see how it goes.

The idea of doing this untested statewide is just plain irresponsible. The motivation is no doubt political exediency and/or greed.
The logic goes something like this:
Nobody wants more wild Chinook and steelhead runs to get ESA listed, why not just make hatchery fish politically equivalent (who cares about biology) to wild fish. Then everyoe can continue to fish, mine, log, develop, dam, and pollute with a clear conscience. Just go look at the hatchery trap there's lots of fish coming back things must be ok with the wild fish . . .

All I ask for is a simple experiment on one or two rivers that will never get done because political realities trump biological ones. Instead this will be done as a state wide experiment with all our wild runs at risk. The results maybe disasterous or benign to wild fish we won't know for years.

Fishologist, if I were you I couldn't in good conscience advocate such a widesweaping experiment without stronger evidence that it would work. I know you belive it will work, but what if you're wrong?