Laterun,

Your story about Garrison Ck hatchery loses some traction with me. Either you or your source - glad you kept his name off the BB - are way off on some fish basics. First, the smolts wear the same scales from freshwater to saltwater and back again. However, smolts are characterized by loose scales, and any that are lost from that point on will be regenerated as a new scale. But they don't just lose all their scales at smoltification and grow new ones for saltwater.

What made those fish sterile? As far as I know it isn't caused by holding them to a delayed release. Delayed release does cause a high percentage of the chinook to become PS resident. I don't think any PS chinook have been documented living to 8 or 9 years, sterile or not.

I don't know about panda bears and slothes, so I hope you got that part correct.

Sg