Editor’s note: Retired Alaska fisheries biologist Ben Van Alen has extensive experience in Alaska salmon management and shared this commentary, also provided ot the Alaska Board of Fisheries, opposing the proposed expansion of pink salmon stockings by Alaska hatcheries.
By Ben Van Alen
It is time for our experiment with the ocean ranching of hatchery salmon to end.
There is no ecological, nor economic, niche for hatchery salmon. Hatchery fish increase competition, decrease growth, increase predation, decrease survivals, increase straying, decrease fitness, increase harvest pressure, and decrease management precision on wild fish. Hatchery releases put wild and hatchery fish in direct competition for declining resources. We observe declining or depressed runs of eulachon, herring, and wild and hatchery salmon wherever we have industrial scale hatchery releases.
How can a hatchery fish help a wild one?
To have healthy salmon runs we must maintain the environment, maintain the wild spawners, and close hatcheries – to protect the environment and protect the spawners. The abundance of salmon (and all biota) is always ultimately limited by the environment’s carrying capacity – not by the numbers of babies. The carrying capacity can be filled with wild fish, or hatchery fish, but it is the nutrient cycling of wild fish that maintains the carrying capacity. Wild fish are dying for more. It is best to manage for naturally distributed spawners within a range that returns are not obviously limited by too few, or too many, spawners.
Our industrial-scale “ocean ranching” hatchery releases push carrying capacity thresholds and contribute to highly variable survivals and returns of both wild and hatchery salmon. Poor survivals of wild salmon results in low returns and low escapements and years of fishery restrictions to rebuilt escapements and returns. It takes fish to make fish. The sustaining and rebuilding of wild runs is impossible in the face of continued hatchery releases. Where are there industrial-scale hatchery releases and not declining runs of eulachon, herring, and salmon?
Production of salmon (and all plants and animals) is always ultimately limited by the environment’s carrying capacity – not by the numbers of babies. You can’t just release more fish and get more fish just like you can’t just plant more corn to get more corn.
The productivity of the ocean is limited just like the productivity of a field is limited. The natural fertilizing by millions of salmon in thousands of natal lakes, streams, and rivers is needed to maintain the environment’s productivity just like the farmer must fertilize to maintain the productivity of his/her field. In fact, the farmer also knows the importance of tilling the soil before planting and the importance of seed quality. The farmer knows if she/he wants more corn then they need a bigger field.
Our industrial-scale ocean-ranching hatchery program disregards natural ecological processes and all that we have learned about agriculture and farming since 700 BC. The Mighty Pacific is Nature where carrying capacity and natural selection rules. There is only one Mighty Pacific. We can’t do better that what happens naturally. We must use Nature as our guide and minimize differences from what happens naturally.
There is nothing natural or sustainable about hatchery propagation regardless of the millions of dollars we spend to build and operate hatcheries and the millions of dollars and hours we spend to manage for and around hatchery fish. Ironically, about the same proportion of wild runs are allowed to spawn as the proportion of hatchery runs that are harvested for brood stock and cost recovery? Again, the production of salmon is limited by the carrying capacity and the carrying capacity is limited by our habitat protections, the number we harvest, and the number we release from hatcheries.
To sustain healthy stocks and fisheries we must maintain natural habitat conditions as much as possible (Vote yes on Proposition 1), actively manage salmon harvests to maintain naturally distributed and abundant spawners, and close hatcheries. Its the numbers that die, not the poor egg-to-fry. Human nature is not mother nature. We can’t do better than what happens naturally. Realize that what happens naturally is the positive result of millions, billions, and gazillions of experiments in the competition and cooperation of the biota in the biosphere (fish in the sea).
Hatchery salmon swim with wild fish, they eat what wild fish eat, they eat wild fish, they stray and spawn and reduce the fitness of wild fish, they reduce survivals of wild fish, and, they do not make more fish – they make fewer. Wild and hatchery fish fill the carrying capacity but only wild fish help to sustain it. It is the natural nutrient cycling of millions of wild salmon spawning and dying in thousands of natal streams that helps maintain the productive capacity of our watersheds, estuaries, bays, straits, and ocean.
It is the millions of wild salmon that return to spawn where and when their parents did that maintains the genetic and biodiversity fitness needed to have healthy stocks and fisheries. We’ve allowed billions of hatchery fish to elbow their way into the ecosystem potluck without bringing a dish. We’ve allowed millions of hatchery fish to stray, spawn, and unnaturally hybridize with, and reduce survivals of, wild fish. The “nutrient mining” inherent with ocean ranching is lowering the productivity for all biota. The 1.6+ billion ”nutrient miners” now released from Alaskan hatcheries each year are in direct competition for space and food with wild fish.
How can a hatchery fish help a wild fish?
Every place we look we find hatchery releases up and wild (and now hatchery) fish down. Cutting hatchery fish by 100 percent is needed to sustain healthy eulachon, herring, and salmon stocks and essential now that we have declining and depressed runs of wild eulachon, herring, and salmon in Southeast Alaska, Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, and Kodiak. It is not thanks to hatcheries that we still have fisheries – it is because of hatcheries that we are losing our fisheries. From fishers to hatchery harvesters, hatcheries have become one of the biggest “user group” in the State.
Simply put, low salmon runs are a consequence of over-fishing and over-releasing. We have nearly 100 percent control over the former and should close hatcheries to control the latter.
The Board of Fisheries should take actions immediately to: 1) discontinue hatchery releases of Chinook, Coho, and Sockeye Salmon; and 2) allow only volutional releases of less than 20 million unfed Pink and Chum Salmon fry from hatchery sites until a complete review of factors limiting the production of wild and hatchery fish is completed.
In summary, it is impossible to maintain healthy salmon stocks and fisheries in the face of industrial-scale hatchery releases. There is only one ocean and the production of salmon from the ocean is ultimately limited by its carrying capacity. Wild fish can fill this carrying capacity and only wild fish help to sustain it. It is the natural spawning and dying of millions of salmon in thousands of natal streams that helps maintain the productive capacity of our watersheds, estuaries, bays, straits, and ocean. Hatchery fish are elbowing their way into the ecosystem potluck without bringing a dish.
The “nutrient mining” inherent with ocean ranching is lowering the productivity for all biota. The 1.6+ billion ”nutrient miners” now released from Alaskan hatcheries each year are in direct competition for space and food with wild fish. We observe declining and depressed runs of eulachon, herring, Chinook, Sockeye, Coho, Pink, and Chum Salmon wherever we have industrial scale hatchery programs.
Why do we continue to think that the ocean is limitless and that we will have more salmon if we just release more salmon? Why allow hatcheries to employ whatever rearing and release strategies they can “afford” to provide their releases with a survival advantage over wild fish? Why allow hatchery strays? Why spend millions of dollars to supplant wild fish with hatchery fish? Instead of joining Japan and Russia as world leaders in ocean ranching nutrient mining we must stand tall and go wild for healthy runs and healthy fisheries. We all know the key to abundant salmon is to maintain the habitat and maintain the spawners. Minimizing hatchery releases is critical to maintaining the habitat and maintaining the spawners – and completely under our control.
How can a hatchery fish help a wild one?
It is time to accept and embrace Alaska’s wild stock priority. Alaska Salmon: Wild, Natural, Sustainable…or Hatchery? Stand Tall, Go Wild.
Van Alen is a retired biologist from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game.
