Alaska hatchery program

Hide Section Navigation. For the protection of wild salmon stocks, hatchery programs are required to use local stocks as the brood source and locate hatcheries away from important wild stocks. Requiring the use of only local salmon stocks means that straying hatchery fish are less likely to reduce fitness of local populations.

In the 's hatchery programs in Alaska pioneered use of otolith thermal marks for mass-marking hatchery production. Marking programs have made possible accurate detection of hatchery-bred salmon on the spawning grounds of wild salmon. These observations have raised several important questions: Are hatchery-bred salmon interbreeding with wild salmon to the extent that fitness and productivity of these stocks are being diminished?

As annual reports are provided, they will be posted on the website see Findings and Updates Section. Policy guidelines include the use of local stocks, taking broodstock from all portions of the run to maintain genetic variation, and requiring sufficient numbers of spawners, but there has been no evaluation of the differences, if any, between hatchery stocks and other stocks in the area.

The labs archived collections include many samples, but some additional samples will be needed for this analysis. A suite of new projects is proposed to annually estimate the following for pink and chum salmon in these two regions: number of wild salmon spawning in the wild; number of hatchery salmon spawning in the wild hatchery strays ; production of hatchery salmon including hatchery strays ; and production of wild salmon excluding hatchery strays.

These new projects involve sampling in both the ocean and streams to estimate two statistics: the fraction of the total run and the fraction of spawning abundance composed of hatchery salmon. These two fractions can be expressed as functions of catches which are known , broodstocks at the hatchery which are known , and escapements to natural spawning systems which are not. A minimum of five years is envisioned for estimating the scope of straying, after which time the costs and benefits of continuing to collect information on pink and chum salmon runs at this level of resolution can be evaluated.

Research is needed to evaluate potential changes in populations of Alaskan pink and chum salmon due to straying of hatchery produced fish. Fitness is a statistic that describes the ability to both survive and reproduce. Our hatchery programs for commercial fisheries are stakeholder driven and overseen by fishermen who strongly support Alaska's mandate to protect wild stocks while enjoying the economic opportunities derived from renewable resources that are well managed.

There are several distinct types of hatcheries in Alaska:. Private nonprofit PNP salmon hatcheries produce salmon to enhance commercial, sport, subsistence, and personal use fisheries. PNP hatcheries are typically owned and operated by regional aquaculture associations or independent nonprofits, though several hatcheries are state owned and the operations are contracted to PNP corporations.