Weer'd World

Wizard PC notes some odd data points in the Hybrid Shark Story

Let me just set it for you this way, Wiz. One of my first paying Marine Science jobs was a summer internship with an aquaculture research company. I got VERY interested in aquaculture and did a lot of research and projects in it.

Now I spent a LOT of time on Atlantic Salmon. Atlantic Salmon gets a LOT of attention in Maine, as the native diadromous fish (the ones that migrate into the ocean, then return to fresh water to spawn) are essentially extinct, but there are a good deal of land-locked populations (The fish don’t NEED to travel into salt water, and can live their entire life cycle in rivers streams, and lakes). The purist environmentalists are big into getting the diadromous fish to return to Maine’s rivers. I really could care less because it costs a lot of money for what is essentially vanity. Still they claim three big problems to this. #1 is physical impedance, these rivers were used heavily during the industrial revolution, and are still used for hydro-electric power. The fish can’t cross the dams and barriers, so this warrants expensive fish ladders, they cost a lot of money, and generally don’t work.
#2. Industrial Chemicals. Its strongly believed that fish find their way back to their ancestral lakes and streams by smell. If the local paper or industrial mill is dumping chemicals when the Smolts are going down stream, but they’re not running, or dumping different chemicals when the adult salmon are heading back upstream they could be confused and not go to the right place, or spawn at all.

#3. Farm fish. Aquaculture salmon, while the same species, are bred like Holstein cows, they are not “Genetically pure” and designed for farming.

Now look at the last two, and note that a Farm fish is raised in a land-based hatchery, then trucked to an ocean-based farm, and salmon cannot spawn in salt water.

If the fish are so touchy on how they find their way home, how can a farm fish EVER spawn with native fish? One of those principals HAS to be wrong.

But this NEVER comes up. Why? Well because industry AND farming are both “Unnatural”, and seen as bad by the same brand of greenies who think the world is somehow a desolate place now that Salmon don’t migrate up the Penobscot or Androscoggin river anymore.

The Scientists who aren’t in industry, and therefore responsible for concrete results (ie none of these scientists get fired if the salmon don’t use the Fish ladder, or if a Farm salmon is found swimming in a stream that it has never lived in) are just as susceptible to religious zealotry as the goofball hippie waiving a sign on Wall Street.