Awhile back, I was reading the bio of the guy that founded Scotty Plastics. He is old and rich now, and is trying to direct his remaining energies in benevolent directions. He invented a plastic tray for holding salmon eggs in the river bed. Sort of a man-made redd. His experiments showed a MUCH higher survival rate using the trays than natural redds. If wild fish eggs were put in these trays, wouldn't the result be wild fish? The only negative aspect I can think of would be the litter from old plastic trays in the river and that's easy enough to fix.

I am nowhere near an expert of this subject and DO NOT want to start another "hatchery vs wild" argument. But I would appreciate if some of the members of this board who know more than me could explain if this is a viable idea.

Slab:

Seems to me you would have to alow the fish to spawn naturally, then transfer the eggs to the plastic tray.

My only thought is you might damage more than you save in the transfer process. Beyond that , it makes sense. (I think).

Mike

I don't know much about the biological aspect of this thread but I can comment on the plastic tray. With polymer technology these days a biodegradable tray is not out of the question. The plastic could be enhance dto break down from UV or the most abundant solvent in the world (H2O). Just my .02 cents.

LT

I too profess to know very little about this, but it sounds a lot like what Long Live The Kings has been doing, except I think they used wooden trays?

I once interviewed Charile White, who told me he and Mr. Scottie were old time friends. As I remember, Charlie said he invented the concept for the downrigger that we now know as the Scottie and took it to Mr Scott to have him manufacture it.

Vibert boxes were the rage a couple of decades back, and they were basically what you suggest: kind of an in-stream rearing station. I believe they are still used; I recall hearing about some SRC transplanting efforts using such boxes.

The process that I recall is that the fish are captured, spawned artificially, and then the fertilized eggs were placed in the boxes.

The only problem I see is that this method doesn't provide any natural selection for spawning success. The fish have made it to the stream, but the only way you can prove they can successfully spawn in the wild is to let them get their business done. However, for short-term supplementation of runs, I think it sounds pretty good. This might well be one of the proposals on the hatchery reform program, but I'm not privy to that info.

Keith

I think some "hatchery" programs use eggs from captured wild fish and that seems to be the best way to help the success rate of non-hatchery wild fish. Something like this is not raising the smolt in concrete pens and is as close to natural spawning as I can imagine. Helping wild fish spawn is quite different from propogating fish in a traditional hatchery system.

I have also seen old fridges used with a baffles system set up inside. think of all the old fridges in this state being dumped in the rivers

This is a not a new idea however I feel your pain. Remote site incubators have been around for a long time and are still continuing to be used. The idea is to use "native/wild" broodstock eggs in a controlled flow incubator, which then releases the fry into the home river system. These fry would be considered wild and this method would significantly eliminate the natural mortality due to silt, flooding, predation etc. on the egg to fry production. Should be slam dunk however nothing is ever that easy as they have been trying methods along this line for about 100 years. Kick started fry plants on river systems with no "carrying capicaty" for your programs fry/juvenials won't work unless your have the habitat to rear then. Make the rearing/spawning habitat and the fish will come without the use of encubation enhancing devices. If you are trying to save the last genetic fish in the system (Idaho sockeye) then artifical methods should be used otherwise I think we should be making the effort to solve the other problems that are limiting the systems' production, i.e. 4-H's

Beezer

I don't know what Scottie made for egg incubation, but I did use the Vibert boxes back in the 1970s that kjackson mentions in his post. They work in streams that have very little fine sediment. When filled with eyed salmon eggs and planted in a typically degraded (a stream whose watershed has been logged) northwest stream, the boxes fill with fine sediment - even worse than naturally spawned redds - and the eggs suffocate and die.

The UW Fisheries Research Institute tried some "above gravel" incubators in the Skagit River also in the 70s to avoid or reduce the fine sediment accumulation. The eggs survive to hatch, but the alevines didn't have the necessary clean strata with minimal current velocity they need for developing into emergent fry.

As you can see, it's tough to improve on Mother Nature. We have our other extreme of completely artificial reproduction and rearing of fish, but come to find out, we have a lot of problems with that as well.

Somebody has tried everything that has been thought of, and varying degrees of success have occurred. Remote Site Incubators (RSI) of various sorts have proven useful and fairly reliable for certain species like pink and chum salmon that often spawn in clusters naturally and do very little freshwater rearing as fry.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Thanks Salmo, I kinda thought it might be you that clairified this subject for me.

It still seems like it would work great if the problems with the boxes or trays could be fixed.

WDFW has programs that might allow private citizens to incubate eggs in local streams. I live on a salmon bearing creek and have just begun the process of contacting them to see if I can use something like the Scotty system to enhance the fish populations. I think they may provide eggs to people from excess hatchery or wild brood stock, but I haven't got details yet. I'll try to keep updating the board if it works out.

i have heard of grade school classes that have done projects like this so one would think that great minds like WDFW could do it also.