33 



nally there when the habitat was in place, and I sort of question 

 that. 



Mr. Hamburg. So in that case you do end up with the wild fish 

 stock being replaced by the hatchery stock. That is just what hap- 

 pens? 



Mr. KoENiNGS. Yes, in our particular programs, and I don't pre- 

 tend to be a geneticist, but we try to stay away from the F-1 gen- 

 eration. We complete our particular task, if you will, hopefully in 

 one life cycle, and don't get into taking of eggs, if you will, from 

 progeny once we have gone into a population and come back from 

 that particular intervention. It is sort of circumspect, but that is 

 how we do it. 



Mr. Hamburg: Can hatchery fish ever acquire the characteristics 

 of a sustainable wild population? 



Mr. KoENiNGS. Oh, absolutely. We have had various examples in 

 Alaska where we have taken fishless habitats, habitats that simply 

 don't have fish for barrier reasons. Anadromous fish need to get 

 upstream and spawn, of course, and when there is an impassable 

 barrier there, one avenue that we use very successfully is to estab- 

 lish fish passes. Fish passes are only used by adult fish. However, 

 first you have to get the young fish into the system to get the adult 

 fish back to use the fish passes. 



In the state, we have used hatchery technology to do that, where 

 we have taken stocks out of one particular, although adjacent wa- 

 tersheds, and have applied those progeny to the unused habitat 

 and have essentially created a naturally returning population of 

 fish that are heavily harvested. One example I mention in my writ- 

 ten testimony is Frazer Lake where populations of both sockeye 

 and Chinook salmon have established themselves and have been 

 fished now regularly for, oh, almost a decade. Those populations 

 are producing a harvest on the order of one million fish a year, sus- 

 tainable through natural spawning. 



Mr. KoENiNGS. I know it wasn't me. 



Mr. Hamburg. Thank you. Dr. Hershberger, you noted that the 

 behavior traits developed by hatchery fish are incompatible with 

 survival in natural environments and suggested some means of 

 avoiding development of those traits. Could you please elaborate on 

 the alternative techniques and the feasibility of their implementa- 

 tion in the commercial hatcheries? 



Mr. Hershberger. For the most part, the indications are at the 

 moment experimental so as far as the current implications that the 

 feasibility of the application is going to have to await further devel- 

 opment. But such simple things as broadcast feeding, nonpoint 

 source feeding, changing timing of feeding has been shown to 

 change behavior in a positive manner. There has even been some 

 work with introducing predators. Fish can be trained. They are not 

 stupid. And that I don't think anyone would want to put a ling cod 

 in their raceway of salmon right now, but there may be techniques 

 whereby we can incorporate that into standard hatchery proce- 

 dures — fairly simple things that I think could be feasible given 

 some developmental time, but the results right now are fairly pre- 

 liminary, and there is work actively going on in that way. 



