This month, Sockeye Salmon are being nursed in net pens in Idaho. Soon they’ll be released to begin their 900 mile migration to the Pacific Ocean. But the salmon story really begins at a fish hatchery in Eagle, Idaho where researchers breed these endangered fish in an effort to save the Sockeye from extinction. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
Paul Kline is a Research Biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. He tells us that some of these fish are the descendants of Sockeye that were spawned using artificially preserved sperm, or milt. One of the milt donors was a Sockeye nicknamed ‘Lonely Larry,’ the only fish to survive the migration back to Idaho in 1992.
“So the juveniles that we’re looking at, that are just a year old, they were developed using cryo-preserved milt that we have been fairly diligent to maintain a good inventory of from the ocean going fish that returned from the ocean to Idaho. And in this case, a portion of the fish that we are looking at were produced from milt harvested from the single male, Lonely Larry, that returned to Idaho in 1992.”
Researchers hope that by breeding and releasing Sockeye salmon, they’ll eventually restore the numbers of fish that complete the migration every year. But the breeding program is also a way of keeping generations of Sockeye alive at the hatchery, in case the migration should fail.
“This is the best that we can do to try and prevent species extinction: keeping this genetically prudent, if you will, brood stock alive in the hatchery program to rekindle a run, in the event that we need to start this process over again.”
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.