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[IronNoggin]

On average two million young Chinook salmon are released each spring from the federally funded hatchery on the Cowichan River. Within six months, nearly all of them are dead.

Year after year, the mortality rate is staggering, with less than 1 per cent of the fish living to return as adults. The dismal results are thought to be similar at other B.C. hatcheries, which pump out about 20 million Chinook annually, hoping for a miracle."

...

"At the Omega Pacific Hatchery, near Port Alberni, Ms. Schmitt held her fish in net pens when she moved them to salt water. Because of that, she got to observe how they fared over the first few months in salt water. She saw the mortality rate on a daily basis, and realized that if she didn’t figure out why so many were dying, her hatchery would go out of business.

Over the years, she began to grow her Chinook more slowly, using colder water and less food, mimicking the conditions in nature. Her fish were smaller, and tougher. And she saw the survival rates shoot up to 5, 10, even 20 per cent or more."

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/mark-hume/cowichan-hatchery-needs-a-new-approach/article2438652/?service=mobile

Damn GOOD Work Carol! 
Let's hope The Dino can lose the blinders just long enough to test these amazing results in the real world!!

Cheers,
Nog

[skaha]

--tooo funny... smaller is better or back to nature... we always want bigger faster more bang for the buck approach.
--why then do biologist claim/complain that larger hatchery fish unfairly compete with wild fish due to their larger size and feeding habits... someone has is wrong?

--in any case my belief is that we should mimic nature as close as possible.. for our kokanee hatchery (when we were allowed to run it) my proposal was to get the fish back in the stream they came from asap after hatching so they do not become domestic and have to survive the rigours of the  stream. the only purpose of the hatchery was to give a boost to initial survival as there are not currently enough returning stream spawning fish. after more than 10 years of hoping for a natural rebound to no avail it is time to try  something different. of note shore spawn kokanee in okanagan lake has shown significant increases in the past 10 years since water levels have been managed to accommodate them.. thus one may reasonably speculate that food and lake habitat should not now be the most significant limiting factor for stream spawners.