Monday, December 30, 2024 at 02:18:33 p.m. AST, John Bagnall
Hi Marc. Besides getting bass down to an acceptable level for salmon, another issue our group is interested in is hatchery supplementation. We could produce 20 million eggs annually through a SAS program at a renovated Southesk hatchery. However, we’d never have the incubation and early rearing facilities to produce fry from them. This is why we want permission to stock the pre-spawning adults.
We’d follow the mitigation strategy that has already been developed for SAS with the possible exception of not stocking more fish than currently contribute to the wild population. (By the time the SAS fish are ready, the deposition on the NW/LSW will be 0.25 eggs per m^2 or lower, and we could introduce SAS fish that would increase this by 1 egg per m^2 or more.) The fish would be already imprinted and would save a huge amount of effort to produce fry that would have only a small fraction of the results of an adult release.
Marc, this is an emergency, one that requires urgent action, not small experimental-level measures.
Happy upcoming New Year Marc.