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these stocks are unique, so are the habitats that support them. Though many salmon 

 stocks have been diminished due to general common problems, in fact the situation of 

 most of these individual populations today is unique. Specific hatchery practices, 

 similar to those generalized above, can be designed and used to assist in the 

 restoration of most unique stocks of naturally spawning salmon. 



Question 2 



A. What artificial production techniques and systems are available to assist in the 

 restoration of naturally spawning salmon populations? 



• eyed-egg plants from hatcheries 



• fry plants from hatcheries 



• smolt plants from hatcheries 



• lake enrichment 



B. What monitoring systems are available to preserve life history and genetic diversity? 



• Many monitoring systems are available, but their implementation will not 

 preserve life history and genetic diversity. One has to control, through policy 

 development and regulations, the manner in which the business of salmon 

 restoration is conducted if one hopes to maintain genetic diversity. Simply 

 put, the behavior of humans with regard to the fish has to be controlled. In 

 Alaska, we accomplish this with a permit system that controls the movement 

 of fish used for aquacultural purposes and with rigorous policies on fish 

 disease and fish genetics that are backed with modem laboratories and highly 

 skilled scientists. 



C. Where are such techniques in use and what has been the extent of their success? 



I have used the term before, but in the Pacific Northwest, I believe the word 

 "supplementation" is used to describe the process of artificially adding to the number 

 of individuals in a naturally spawning salmon population. For clarification, let's 

 make sure what exactly we are talking about. In Alaska, when we conceive of 

 rehabilitating the fish in River X, we are speaking of performing an egg take on 

 River X, talcing the eggs back to a hatchery for incubation, and releasing the resultant 

 juveniles back into River X. The objective is to bypass the heavy mortality that 

 Mother Nature usually inflicts upon eggs laid in the gravel in tlie wild. We use, as a 

 rule of thumb, that only ten percent of the eggs in River X will produce juveniles, but 

 90 percent of tliose taken to a hatchery will produce juveniles. The ultimate goal is to 

 boost the number of fish in the system to a higher level and that this lugher level will 

 be self-sustaining. Clearly, and this is extremely important, self-sustainment will not 

 be achieved if whatever factor causing the population to decrease in the first place is 

 allowed to remain operative: declining habitat, overharvest, unusual predator 

 concentration, and some shifts in tiie carrying capacity of the environment. 



Some people in tlie Pacific Northwest have concluded that supplementation docs not 

 work. I would be very careful about concluding that. Certainly, there are cases to 



