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Watering down the fishery gene pool: Do hatcheries help or hinder efforts to sustain wild populations?

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 13, 2009 at 7:18 am

From the Scientific American:

Plummeting numbers of several salmon and trout species have conservationists looking more and more to hatcheries—where fish are reared in comfortable captivity and then released into natural bodies of water. But this strategy may hurt wild populations, according to a paper published this week in Biology Letters.

Researchers at Oregon State University (O.S.U.) found that not only do hatchery-raised steelhead—a Pacific trout sharing the same genus, Oncorhynchus, as salmon—produce relatively fewer and weaker offspring once back in a natural environment, but so do their wild-born spawn.

“Captive breeding programs are a popular and efficient strategy to save declining populations, but the genetic impact must seriously be taken into account,” says Hitoshi Araki, a co-author on the paper who recently moved from O.S.U. to the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. “Otherwise, wild populations can be at risk of extinction.”

Read more from the Scientific American by clicking here.

June 13, 2009 · Filed Under Salmon, Water & Wildlife

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