Molecular genetics applications in fisheries: snake oil or restorative?

✍ Scribed by Rich Lincoln

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 272 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0960-3166
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00042913

✦ Synopsis

Life was once much simpler for Pacific salmon fishery managers. They could aggregate genetic stocks from a region for the convenience of spawning escapement goals and scheduling fisheries, and also designate some regions as hatchery management areas where wild stocks could be overfished to take full advantage of hatchery production capacities. These management tasks could be accomplished without facing an inquisition from a growing number of scientific peers and public constituents who, according to the embattled manager, just do not appreciation the complexities and historical genesis of the current management system. Those were the days when 'stocks were stocks' (the harvest kind; Carvalho and Hauser, 1994) and all else were museum pieces, because that would be the only place to appreciate them once fishery regulations began to protect an endless number of individual breeding populations.

While a bit satirical, this picture does provide a contrast with the increasingly complex stock-management challenges that Pacific salmon managers face today to conserve wild stocks. Many of these challenges certainly are not new, but they now have become so acute for some stocks of chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawyatscha, Salmonidae) and coho (0. kisutch, Salmonidae) salmon, for example, that complete closure of Washington state's ocean salmon fisheries in 1994 is now being planned -a first in its over 40 year management history. A combination of poor marine survival and unfavourable freshwater environmental conditions (e.g. floods and drought) have compounded problems of overexploitation and habitat degradation, while salmon culture programmes have been regarded as important contributors to both the problems and potential solutions. Several recent petitions also have been filed under the US Endangered Species Act to list numerous salmon stocks as threatened or endangered. Against this backdrop, fishery managers in Washington are developing new wild stock management policies to provide clear vision and guidance for directing harvest, hatchery, and habitat management programmes that will restore and maintain the diversity and long-term productivity of wild salmonid stocks.

My perspectives about applications of molecular genetic techniques to help resolve such fishery resource management issues tend to reinforce much of the review by Carvalho and Hauser (1994), Ferguson (1994), and Ward and Grewe (1994). What is a *Snake oil In the 19th century American West, ineffective patent medicines (typically, hair restorers or elixirs of youth) sold by itinerant vendors in 'medicine shows', and hence by extension slang for any valueless product (especially if bolstered by exaggerated claims for efficacy), worthless promise etc. -ed.