With advanced hybrid salmon growing much larger than other salmon, could they gain a mating advantage or outcompete native salmon for food or space?
A. No. Advanced hybrid salmon grow faster than other salmon but they do not grow any larger by the time they reach maturity. Male salmon do not gain a mating advantage because of size. In fact, precocious parr, only 6 inches in length, father about one-fifth of each new generation before they go to sea. Studies of escaped farmed salmon, which are almost always larger than wild fish, have found them to mate successfully only 16 percent as often as native salmon. Farmed salmon are trained to eat fish feed – small, dry pellets that look exactly like the dog chow we feed our family pets. If they escape, they look for something similar. Most don t find it. More than 85 percent of the farm escapees caught off British Columbia and Alaska had no food in their bellies. In a 1999 study, the Washington State Department of Ecology found farm escapees to be eating tree bark in local rivers, because it apparently looked like fish feed. Advanced hybrid salmon may forage even more poorly because they
Related Questions
- With advanced hybrid salmon growing much larger than other salmon, could they gain a mating advantage or outcompete native salmon for food or space?
- Aren advanced hybrid salmon voracious predators that will consume all the available food in an ecosystem and will prey on native juveniles?
- Do advanced hybrid salmon produce antifreeze proteins and excessive amounts of growth hormone?
