Talked to a fish biologist. He said hatchery fish that do naturally spawn produce young that are wild fish because they are born in the river and survive on their own. Wild fish and native fish are not the same in terms of genetics.

Fish farm fish are trapped in a closer container or net pens. Where as hatcheries fish migrate out to the oceans and migrate back to their spawning grounds. The in - closed fish are fed with pellets that have chemicals, which helps Fish grow faster and not good for humans to consume. Complete opposite with the migrating fish eat what's in the entire oceans.

ALL gill nets need to be stopped. Tribal and non-tribal.

Some one is getting money under the table.......INVESTIGATE the Oregon department of fraud and waste!!

Hmmm do all these fish being killed by gill net in the columbia spring chinook and by catch know when they die who's net is non tribal and who's net is Tribal I wonder?😂 I call BS

There should be no guilt Nets inside the Columbia river

I was an active CCA member for about 5 years, on the banquet committee, helped raised thousands on auctions. When Kitzhaber got in office we thought gillnets were a thing of the past, until his girlfriend ended his political career and promise to honor his pledge to sports fishermen. Now, as expected, the commercial fishing lobby is once again exploiting loopholes at the expense of sportsmen who fund the entire ODFW and Washington state FW. We can’t ignore this any more.

Where's your science? Where's your studies to back up your argument? I don't see any counts of any kind happening at all. Why would a businessman who makes his money on sport fishing make a film about destroying his industry? WHERE IS YOUR SCIENCE!?!!!!!

What a bunch of lies. You make statements w zero facts. Fish are supposed to be wild. Load of horseshit this presentation.

Sounds like everyone needs to stop using gill nets...

We all would like to see more improvements with all species' survival and catch rates with tribal and non tribal should be monitored when water temperatures arise when there should be closer taken effect and open later on when there is colder temperatures.

Nets is the problem

It seems ironic that we are tearing out dams to benefit salmon but still allowing netting by anyone. Seems screwed up! If increasing salmon runs is the goal, stop all netting!

ODFW has made it obvious they are too incompetent to raise salmon and steelhead populations. Thank God for tribal efforts or the salmon would be extinct by now...

The sport fishing community needs to stay home for one season and this will all end, if they did that, they would see how much power they have, they just can't stick together.

I not going to buy anymore salmon licenses in oregon because of the management just look what they are doing to Green Peter!!!!

Just stop buying abfishing license for one year and only by a day license .. watch it hit their pockets and hear the feds cry and feel the pain as license fees plummet then maybe they might listen.. but i doubt it Wa /Ore suck the ding dong big time all demoncrat run special intrest groups..

All this can be laid at the feet of the democrats that run both agencies money and benefits is there only incentive fish are the last thing on there minds

More farmer propaganda

Your cities kill the habitat that destroys salmon populations. It’s why the most commercially fished state AK, still has billions of fish each year. Healthy watershed, river, lakes, and bays. Your housing complexes, concrete, pavement, drainage systems, pour poison into streams, killing microbes, vegetation, and the smolt! Cities kill salmon!!!!!

Was their Hatchery Wild Coexist organized bankrolled by the hatchery industry? There’s a ton of money being funneled from fishing licenses and taxes into hatchery programs, so they do have a financial incentive to preserve the status quo. If so, they should be upfront about where their funding is coming from. They also seem to be ignoring the scientific studies that do exist showing some cases where hatcheries were removed and the total salmon numbers then increased beyond the hatchery supported levels, such as in Scotland and after the mt st helens eruption flood destroyed a hatchery on one of its rivers. It seems like a much more nuanced conversation than this organization is willing to acknowledge. The natural selection forces within a hatchery is also never going to accurately mirror that within a natural environment. It will select for traits that are specifically beneficial for that hatchery environment. Long term this will ultimately then be at the detriment to the genetic fitness of the wild population, as the wild population’s genetics become diluted by wild fish through interbreeding, and as wild fish are forced to compete with far greater numbers of hatchery fish for food. Maybe that’s fine for dammed river systems that can never again support a wild population. But they should at least acknowledge that these are domestic fish engineered through artificial selection, replacing the natural evolutionary process. The longterm goal in the remaining wild rivers should be habitat preservation to support healthy wild populations, the way the planet has successfully done it for millions of years.

Wrongx they are, and the factory farms and man.

I got to visit with Del when he helped with Lamiglas blue water series he has that fishery dialed to a T

Thanks Bruce, for a great update and overview of the current challenges recreational fishermen face in local fish politics!

There are no fish at the Leaburg Hatchery???

I gave up fishing the Columbia a long time ago.

fantastic. really love the current state of the world. AI is going to understand the value of these fish, but will have trouble understanding why we are here.

The enemies are liberals and tree huggers. After that are environmental problems.

Thanx

$11,000 worth of chinook at $5/lb and 15lb fish is only 146 fish in a 12 hour fishery.... It was also made after there were enough fish for escapement and after the sport fishery was re-opened for another 8 days...

This is an absolute outrage that they allowed those nets in. We use barbless hooks, keep wilds in the water until release, let go all of the Sturgeon, don't take care of the Sea lion problem... We will only be patient so long... The sportsmen/women are where all the money is spent. It's about time to just start saying no to things like price increases and endorsements if we don't get what we want. More fish/less stupidity

This is the best article I have read that explains WHY the salmon are disappearing. I doubt that with the stupidity of humans they will be comming back soon.

It's a good counter to Artificial, but the content is biased towards fisheries: "fisheries have successfully mitigated the decline of wild populations" !? Like, are you kidding me? I'm not saying that stocking is not part of the tools to maintain some populations, as well as food on the table for many First Nations, but there is ample evidence that fishery fish also degrade the gene pool and often have a low survival rate, even if more fish come back to spawn, which is not always the case. It seems that, too often, hatcheries are about keeping fishing businesses alive and act as a band-aid when what's needed is river watershed protection and restoration-connectivity being a big part of it. The narrator is right when saying that the decline of wild populations is because of human pressures on rivers, but essentially claiming that hatcheries are saving the fish is definitely a stretch. He mentions one study that matches his narrative, but just take a look at Google Scholar and you will see that it's much much more complex than that. In the end, both movies are activist movies, and so cherry pick the content that will fit their narrative best. Again, it's not to say they're wrong, but none tells the complexity of the topic.

Sir, with all due respect our “way of life” is unsustainable at best but I enthusiastically support the debate.

Something's better than nothing, and that's hatchery fish. Laws and regulations must comply with the co-existence of hatchery fish, and then probably need to take the hatchery programs out of the state governments' hands. Run them through NGOs, tribes, or private contractors.

I watched the hole thing before commenting, but he missed the entire point of the documentary. The entire point of the film is that dams have made it impossible for salmon and Steele head to reproduce where they once did. They then state that hatcheries were created as a necessity to save the salmon and steele head species, but the quality of salmon and strength of the species is weakened when they are inbred in hatcheries. There is also a complimentary documentary they produced called Damnation that covers this topic in even greater detail. The documentary was not incorrect. Your interpretation of it is.

After over 100 years of hatchery operation, I have to question whether their ARE genitically distinct populations of 'wild' fish and hatchery produced salmon. Why? Because 'wild' and hatchery fish DO interbreed, and HAVE interbred, over the span of years since hatcheries came into existence. Essentially, they are the same fish because of this ability to interbreed. Add to that, the fact that in the early period of hatchery operation, stocks from diverse watersheds were intermingled, to provide breeding stock in hatcheries, because in that period of time it was not known that each race of salmon were genetically specific to the waters from which they were derived. So at the beginning of hatchery supplementation, it was already a jumble, and trying to differentiate 'hatchery' fish, from 'native, or wild' fish, is pretty much a fools errand. But one that through the 'management' departments, (with the exception of Alaska Fish and Game ) has been sold to the public, through the press, ( and we all know how honest those people are).

I have watched the rivers in the Sacramento valley for 35 yrs and they [the Sacramento/Feather /American / Yuba ... etc and they are die ing rivers in my opinion but... the American was a thriving river because they maintained the current and temperature throughout the year and now that the gubmint stopped fishing in the BASIN and is trying to make a ladder to upstream then it will help but it may take years as they the gubmint still allow SEALIONS to take salmon and steelhead at the hatchery and the face of the damm NIMBUS ...WITHOUT STOPPING THEM! THIS NEEDS TO STOP ! also steelhead fishing in these rivers need to be catch and release and barbless hooks with the upper reatches being flyfishing only /catch/release ! the American river could be turned into a premere river as a trophy fish river as well as the feather ! I remember when we caught spring run silvers and 35 lb chinooks in march and june , silvers in the 6to 8 lb range and also some sea run browns yea searun browns ,back when the men running the hatchery cared and the people made sure the that there was water in the river when the fish were spawning and all year long and the people cleaned up their trash after floating the river ... it is a disgrace to see the amount of trash left in the river at takeout spots on the river DISGRACE! THESE RIVERS ARE A JEWELL running through a million people cities and need to be protected from this behavior ! D W C ...

Here in bc hatcheries brought back our coho and chinook fisheries in our lower mainland. Chinook being the primary food of the southern resident killer whales not only fo we get a sport fishery but whales get fed. For Patagonia billionaire to compare hatcheries to fish farms is just plain fear mongering.

Science shows "that premise" is right, (not wrong). The evidence clearly shows in multiple examples that streams and rivers that are left to the wild salmon to procreate, is vastly better than introducing "farm raised" salmon to satisfy the commercial and recreational fisherman. Although this is about the loss of wild salmon vs hatchery salmon, it's also about the Orca population... fascinating that the Orca pod(s) off Spain are attacking boats lately. One has to wonder about the correlation between the oceans over-fishing, warming, etc and the Orca's anger (or at least it seems that way) Incredible to think that Elon Musk is on record saying : "the world needs more humans" But, hey, I've been a fisherman, diver, surfer and ocean lover all my life... (72) and lo and behold, I lived in Ventura; (Patagonia headquarters), so I guess I'm biased ?

There is misinformation and misdirection in both of these videos. The idea that hatcheries are wholesome and pure and have had no impact on wild populations is in itself insincere not supported by years of research on documented decreased in reproductivity and resilience in hatchery fish and when cross breed with wild populations have caused the decline of wild fish in many river systems in the Northwest. On the other hand hatchery practices have evolved with more sophisticated use of wild brood stock and carefully not breeding returning hatchery fish has helped mitigate some of these concerns but not completely. It is true some rivers have been altered by dams and development to have destroyed miles of spawning habitat and now are dependent on hatcheries. There are also free flowing rivers mostly still intact with viable wild populations that need our support to renew and protect. Theses rivers need their natural ability to support abundant wild populations of anadromous fish protected. Hatcheries are not the solution here just more human interference. There are two sides to each of the black and white perspectives of both of these videos.

Take down the dams and stop the stocking

thank you greed and coveting and not keeping with the bible is the problem :) just commenting

He's right about hatcheries not being the cause of fish declines but it shouldn't be a permanent solution. Selectively breeding fish will ultimately result in domesticated strains of fish which do not have the same integrity as wild fish. And there are still natural native populations but are low in number and need alot of help. The way i see it a river with a healthy wild fish population shouldn't be stocked(don't fix what ain't broken)but i do understand in current times we depend on hatcheries to support fisheries. Just saying we shouldn't just give up on wild populations and just sit back and depend solely on hatcheries

I think there are good points made in this video. I grew up in Spokane WA and the Spokane Tribe built their civilization around Coho and Chinook salmon. As a result of dams along the Columbia native migratory fish to Spokane has ceased to exist.

"IT is very hard for a man to understand something , when his salary depends upon him understanding it" Upton Sinclair

I prefer to stay out of the public sector science for the exact reason of what I listened to here. There is incompetence dominating both sides of this issue. Sarah is clearly not scientifically competent and neither is DEQ. DEQ is much more of a political regulatory organization than a science driven one. (I have seen them ignore the actual scientists). Sarah's group sounds more like an advocacy group than one driven by science. Their biologists should revolt. pH in soft water like we have in the western half of Oregon is not the issue it is in hard water regions such as much of the Rockies, Midwest and parts of Eastern Oregon. I don't have the time to go into a long monologue here, but pH spikes are normal in soft waters. In this case it is caused by super saturated oxygen caused by photosynthesis. Turbulence from riffles knocks it back down. I'd look at the spatial distribution of the trout. Only if they are concentrated in the riffles will O2 supersaturation be a problem. I'd also look where they placed their measuring devices to see if they set them up to show bias. The algae issue is driven by the bioenergetics of cyano-bacteria in Lake Billy Chinook. Any time clean water of volcanic origin warms to over 20C the BGA will bloom. When cold water is drawn from the lake bottom, that "algae" is avoided since it stays in the warm surface water. There is a way to fix this, but that's another topic. We need to ask the question of do we want an "unnatural" tailwater trout fishery that we have enjoyed for 60ish years , or do we want a more natural system that really can only be brought back by the elimination of the blue green algae? ( by the way, bottom draw can kill most of the anadromous fish passing over the dam) These issues get much larger than the Deschutes Basin when one considers the history of stream fertilization programs that helped anadromous fish by replacing biomass that was lost with the larger historic runs. The fingerprint of DEQ is on this question as well in the more recent history of eliminating stream fertility replacement that is harming salmonid runs that the fertility helped. I've gone into this much more than I'd planned, but I did ask some important questions that we need to address. At the end of the day it is very frustrating to be a biologist watching these dirty football games of politics.

I agree with this man, and appreciate his passion. I just wish he wasn't shouting for 16 minutes.

I found it disappointing not one person interviewed was representing a group of first nations, just all white folk and most in the recreation and tourism industry so of course they think hatchery fish are great, it gives them job security. I don't think you've answered the question of what is the long term solution. Is adding hatchery fish to these rivers every year/long term actually sustainable...what actions could be taken so that no human intervention is needed to ensure the salmon and steelhead can survive in healthy numbers long term?

There are scientific answers that are opposed by activists who "believe in science". What that means is they are biologically and ecologically incompetent, but they know how to sell fear for a profit. Some of these activists have infected many of our public regulatory agencies.