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I made this post primarily to show another side of the feel good every things going great PR that comes out of the Hubbs institute. This program was always experimental and I believe has run its course. Hubbs claims a large part of the wsb recovery is due to their efforts. In reality traditional marine fisheries techniques such as reduced bag lmits, reduced bag limits in spawning season, increased mimimum size limits, and the elimination of gill nets from state waters have had a vastly greater impact on increasing wsb populations.
The state Fish and Wildlife pathologist's duty in checking the fish leaving the hatchery and again prior to release is to prevent the hatchery fish from spreading disease to wild fish stocks. If the fish are pathogen free they can be released. The quality control, genetic variety, and coded wire tag retention are the responsibility of the hatchery.
The hatchery's goal is to produce wsb that will survive to maturity and aid the reproductive population. The other goal for the fish is they will reach a catchable size to take fishing pressure off the wild fish. Releasing massive numbers of fish means nothing if they can not survive the 3-5 years it takes to reach sexual maturity/catchable size. Clearly fish that are blind, have spinal deformities, and heart defects have a greatly reduced chance of survival.
Mike
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