A new study finds if fish raised in captivity breed with fish in the
wild that might hurt the wild fish populations. Rebecca Williams
reports that’s because the captive fish are genetically weaker:
Transcript
A new study finds if fish raised in captivity breed with fish in the
wild that might hurt the wild fish populations. Rebecca Williams
reports that’s because the captive fish are genetically weaker:
Billions of fish are raised in hatcheries and released into lakes and
rivers.
But a new study in the journal Science says there could be
problems with that. The researchers found a type of salmon bred in
captivity quickly adapted to their less stressful life in the hatchery.
So they weren’t prepared for a cutthroat life in the wild.
Michael Blouin is an author of the study. He says the babies of
captive-bred fish have trouble finding food and aren’t very good at
escaping predators.
“If you have large numbers of hatchery fish mixing with wild
populations, the fear is they’ll be passing those genes to the wild
population and thereby dragging down the fitness of the wild
population.”
Blouin says this has not been proven outside of the laboratory yet, but he says the lab results raise some concerns about the widespread
use of captive fish to boost wild fish populations.
For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.