Dolphin,

Regarding your comment, "I would like the politicians, managers and biologists to get their act together, so I can go out catch some fish, bonk and eat them." I won't try to convince you that the aforesaid group has its act together, but just want to remind you that they serve multiple masters. WDFW is required by legislative mandate to preserve and perpetuate fish and wildlife resources and also maintain viable commercial fisheries as well as recreational fisheries. If that isn't impossible enough - and it is impossible with the human population increasing like rabbits and fish and wildlife decreasing - they also have to comply with US v WA treaty fishing allocation requirements and ESA requirements from the feds. Anybody in that situation is truly between a rock and a hard place. As a consequence, they do provide you with some fishing opportunity and a chance to bonk and eat a few fish. If you want a significantly better fishing condition for yourself, you need a whole lot fewer people in this state and an environment that can produce vastly more fish than is possible at present.

I haven't read the study, but I doubt the authors are claiming DNA modification at the intercellular level. I believe the claim is limited to saying that one generation of hatchery experience very significantly reduces reproductive fitness for the natural environment. In the simplest terms, it's like saying the fish lose their "street smarts" and are now better fit to survive in a protected environment like a hatchery rather than the brutal world of the natural ecosystem. I don't think we have steelhead DNA mapped anywhere near to the point that we can associate a specific behavioral characteristic with a particular DNA sequence.

The McAllister hatchery was closed because the creek is infested with nanophytes, and the chinook smolts suffered very heavy losses as a result. Hatchery fall chinook (same Green R stock) are reared and released from the Deschutes and Nisqually. The Deschutes used to have delayed releases also - see comment above about one of the reasons why that was discontinued. I think Deschutes (Percival Cove) also has some parasite problems in the delayed release program.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Laterun,

WDFW has cut back on various delayed release chinook programs because they tilt the treaty:non-treaty chinook harvest allocations out of balance. The program appeared to have strong merit in response to recreational fishing interests, but could not be sustained without cutting back on other non-treaty chinook harvests. Or treaty tribes would have to initiate a major PS net fishery on blackmouth, which the state tried desparately to avoid when some tribes first proposed that in the 1970s. Call that one an incident of recreational interests being trumped by federal case law.

Yeah, the Willapa hatchery has issues. The barrier doesn't work during high water, which unsurprisingly is when all the hatchery fish swim right over it and go upstream to spawn naturally. A point of interest here is that hatchery coho in western WA seem to reproduce fairly well in the natural environment. Probably not as well as wild fish - I don't think we know, but certainly well enough to produce subsequent recruits. Just the opposite with Chambers Ck winter steelhead. They spawn in the wild. The spawn produces fry. And eventually some smolts. But the number of adult recruits time and time again is statistically zero. Best to keep species in mind when discussing the reproductive fitness of wild and hatchery fish.