Hatchery Monitoring - What and Why?

Operation of hatcheries in the future will increasingly be linked to monitoring of both hatchery and wild fish.  From a hatchery production standpoint key elements may include egg to smolt survival, migration speed to the ocean, ecological interactions, adaptation to climate change, adult return rates, age at return, contribution to fisheries, rate of straying, number of fish in broodstock, timing of broodstock collection, and how many of the broodstock are wild fish.  From a wild production standpoint important factors include many of the same elements with special emphasis on spawner abundance, extinction risk, fraction of hatchery fish in spawning population, and distribution of natural spawners in the watershed.  Why some of these monitoring efforts are needed and how the resulting information is used, will be discussed for three general categories: hatchery production, wild production, intervention with hatchery fish to ‘rescue’ at risk wild populations.  Case histories for each of these categories will be used to illustrate the importance of monitoring.