Tim Smith

...frozen food section at Kroger might be fun.

Well, Drew, that's quite an effort on your part for a topic that you think doesn't belong on the forum. Well done. Thanks for sorting out the issues about God and evolution. Now that's all cleared now and none of those issues will ever crop up again since everyone has the benefit of your knowledge. Congratulations on a fast start. Hmmm. You're slowing down a bit now. Your point is that trout and water buffalo have the same degree of domestication? That's quite an assertive stance but it's a tenuous one at best. Onchorhycus mykiss have only been in hatcheries for 150 years. Salvelineus fontanalis a couple of decades longer than that. Salmo truta are in the same ball park. Water buffalo, in contrast, have been domesticated for 7000 years. The stock in question came from a ranch raising them for meat (I know this because I did my "research"). Here's the Wikipedia link if you want to use it to begin chasing down the primary literature and do some more... "research". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Buffalo You might enjoy the pictures on this web page of the water buffalo wearing bridles and yokes and plowing fields, or the jockeys and water buffalo races at the bottom. Maybe we can strap something to a trout they can plow fields of watercress for us or we can jockey them around raceways? Or maybe they need a few thousand more years of domestication before something like that didn't freak them to the point that they rolled over and died. Don't see anyone arguing this point? Ouch. Now you're at a screeching halt. The IUCN (the international body who keeps track of these things) does indeed say there are about that many wild water buffalo left. It also says the main threat to them is interbreeding with domestic water buffalo. Wild water buffalo are genetically distinct from domestic water buffalo. Those are two different animals altogether, and the animals that are on these ranches are the domesticated type. Your view that all these buffalo are "wild" directly contradicts the available science on the matter. Here's a link so you can do some..."research". http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/3129/0 They're shooting cows and plow oxen. At least they take the bridles off first. Glad to have you on the thread.

Right. So why not cut to the chase and erradicate them now. There's no guarantee these animals will be easy to erradicate. Australia is full of wild bulls. I've spent considerable time in the Texas Hill Country and I've stumbled onto large exotics. Several species have established populations there and there's no sign that they're about to go away. In Missouri, where the "back 40" really is 40 acres, it might be a fairly simple thing to track down a big exotic like this (although the abundance of 400 pound hogs makes even that an open question). In Texas and Belize we are talking about hundreds of square miles of bush/jungle/scrub. They can estabilish, proliferate and become a much bigger problem than they are. Yeah. I've thought about the "play-pen" effect. There might be a good argument for a mass-outlet where pressure can be herded away from the truly valuable resources. I was grateful in Illinois that only a handful of farmers along the smallmouth streams I fished understood what they were missing when they packed up the bassboat and headed off to the reservoir. In short order there would have been no smallmouth at all if they had "got it" and fished out of their backyards. But there have to be limits for that kind of thing. This water buffalo hunt falls pretty solidly outside those limits. The lodge where this is occurring also sponsors native game hunts and while they purport to have a "conservation ethic" (HA!!) the net effect is more hunting for a dangeorus, introduced exotic on top more hunting for an already stressed resource. Belizeans have always hunted for food. In the past there were so few of them that it hardly mattered, but land is being cleared for agriculture, there are bands of illegals taking game from across the border in Guatemala, and the population has increased by 33% over the last 25 years. Common game numbers are down and in the short term that won't get batter as the basic principles of conservation are not widely accepted. This place wasn't reducing the stress on anything. They're in a pristine and sensitive environment, adding an exotic species into the environment and attracting the bottom of the barrel of the hunting community, people who are willing to shoot anything. For instance, their website is now advertising hunts for vulnerable, threatened and near threatened species as listed by the IUCN. At the end of the day, Belizeans are going to destroy this business. Their only hope really is to bribe a few corrupt officials and go back into operation on the low down. But the image of westerners coming to Belize to shoot their animals and introduce dangerous exotics into their forests has pretty much doomed this group. The people shutting them down won a ton of good press and political capital. No one in Belize outside a handful of employees is sad to see them go. Be careful they don't suck you down the sewer with them. Legitimizing this form of hunting blurs the lines between something that can only be attractive to people who kill for the sake of killing and the actual sportsmen who care about the environment that provides their game, who value fair chase, and who genuinely want to see what's honorable in hunting passed on in a sustainable way. Ultimately, that is the reason I think there are real limits on the "play-pen" style of wildlife management. The extreme forms of canned hunting are completely out of step with cultural norms. If hunting and fishing try to survive under that under that model, they will gradually be legislated out of existence. Few will be sad to see them go and there are plenty who would be glad to lump all hunting into this category and pitch it all out the door. Fine. Just shoot it in the corral, don't let it out into a sensitive environment, and don't call it hunting. Ok, that's pretty funny but it concedes the point.

The question isn't about exploiting domesticated animals. The purpose of domesticating an animal is to exploit it. The problem is with releasing a(nother) domesticated animal as an exotic into the wild and creating an industry to hunt it. The trout parks are no great prize either, but they're not nearly as bad as establishing a new industry hunting for cows. For instance: 1. Water buffalo are yet another exotic in North America. Do we really need another problem from a feral domestic animal? 2. Stocked trout come from wild stock and their domestication is limited to increase their survival in the field. Water buffalo were never a wild animal. They're COWs designed to provide agricultural services. People MILK them, pull carts with them, plow fields with them and make them into steaks. There's no difference between shooting one and shooting a Herford. 3. Trout won't wander off, become feral then try to gore random people.

All manner of livestock can hurt you if you don't handle them properly. They're still livestock. These "hunters" are still shooting a cow. This matters why? It's hardly surprising some other idiot released an exotic domesticated animal into the wild where it can do more damage so some other idiot can go out and feel like a big man for shooting it. No. God put them in Thailand. An idiot put them in North America and Belize. Don't blame God for stupid stuff that people do.

Exactly...remember the video of the canned leopard hunt where the leopard ran under a car in the parking lot and the hunter just walked across the parking lot and shot it while it was hiding there? The put and take analogy is interesting but not a close match. Put and take trout is a grocery run. Shooting a terrified animal under a car or a COW?? A COW?!?! Someone who does it by accident when they're stoned your of their minds on the opening day of deer season is lame, but they're still miles ahead of these nimrods.

Shooting feral pigs? That's God's work. Killing a destructive exotic that's out of control and good to eat and an exciting hunt makes all the sense in the world. Non-stop all day long, just go for it. Godspeed. Shooting a domestic cow that someone stuck out in a field for you to kill? How do you pay for that? How do you brag about something like that? What piece of a person is missing that keeps them from seeing how degrading that is? ...so degrading the Government of Belize shut it down.

The Belizean Government has just shut down a group operating hunting tours for "free range water buffalo". Water buffalo are a domesticated animal used to plow carry burdens in Southeast Asia much as oxen were in Europe and North America in the past... ...I guess the attraction is that they have big horns?? For 5K/hunt??? There are similar operations shooting a variety of "cows" in Texas as well. It's hard to come up language suitably brutal to apply here. Worst. Ever. Bottom of the barrel. Genetic defectives. It's all too weak.

Great comments all around. This is really an area where anglers and commercial fishermen might make a real contribution. "Invasivores" that eat invasive and ecologically harmful species may or may not take enough to make a difference... ...but despite the skeptics it makes a heck of a lot of sense to try.

Here are some additional thoughts: If you can find the old discussion you can go to the link for the peer-reviewed citation for polyploidy. They'll be using the same techniques for these salmon. The outlook that actually works for aquaculture is that if it can happen, it will eventually happen. The industry deals with millions of individuals which statistically makes escape events inevitable. Even a small number of escapes is a serious issue. Many salmon runs in the US consist of 10,000 fish or less. A few aggressive males dominating a spawning site can fare quite well in that population. Take no comfort in QA/QC. QC is optional for many aquacultural companies. Yes, they need it to compete successfully, but they are loathe to spend money on QC that does not benefit their bottom line. Without economic motivation, many of them simply won't do it. Also, there are bad aquaculture companies and good aquaculture companies, and good aquaculture companies that go bad...and stop doing what they are supposed to do. Remember, this is a commodity and their existence and profits are tied to extremely volatile markets. If your choice is to monitor for polyploidy or release staff or close your farm, what would you do? Exactly. There are many countries in the world that don't really care about the environment at all and won't enforce ANY regulations regarding inland/offshore fish. This truely is a "ring the bell" risk scenario. The lag time is probably decades, but just at the Asian Carp barrier was doomed to fail, so is any regulatory barrier to keep these salmon out of the sea. There are too many chances over too much time for something not to slip through. I am one who tends to roll his eyes at many of the things that are said about GMO soybeans (although to be clear, I do think Monsanto is administrating the marketing of product like a blood-thirsty pirate and I'll glad when they finally take one between the eyes for all the crap they are pulling). This product is entirely different from a domesticated soybean plant and there is no comparison between the risks.

Under testing for FDA approval right now. That's probably what funded this study. The "never stop growing" gene is owned by a company called "Aqua Bounty" or something close to that.

Great link, Mitch. Let's hope this effort gets some traction and succeeds.

We've had this discussion before. The polyploidy success rate is about 97%. So for every 10,000 fish produced (a small level of production), 300 will be fertile. That amounts to thousands of fertile fish produced annually for even a modest production rate for a given aquacultural center... ...and it is statistically inevitable that those genes will escape once those fish can be bought. Do you really think you can make a rule that will be universally followed? The consequences of ignoring rules (which ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS happens) is that those genes will enter the wild and then whatever the effects become real instead of inferred. Once these genes are in the population, they can never, ever come out again. To say otherwise and to use these phrases like "scare tactics" and "unscientific" reflects a saddening unfamiliarity with how aquaculture, fish biology, gene flow and ecology actually work. I've had aquaculturists assure me 100% that their stock have never escaped only to sample and find a third of the assemblages around their farms consist of their escapees and descendants. In that case, they didn't know what was happening. In many cases, they simply don't care. Being environmentally responsibile doesn't make them any money. Crash wild salmon? It will only help their profits. Do you really think once these fish are available commercially that companies who's only moral imperative is to make money will follow the rules? They haven't so far. Where will this great enlightenment suddenly come from?

Reforming and guiding aquaculture practice toward sustainable practices make a lot of sense. That's one of the things I do for a job. But reconstruction the genes of animals that will inevitably escape into the wild is a something that we've never done before. There's no choice but to speculate about what it will do because it has never happened before in the wild. There are precedents in invasion biology that raise a lot of red flags. ...we know what kinds of serious problems we get from the natural escapes from aquaculture (Asian carp anyone?). "Scare tactic? How about "prudent caution"?

Correct call on the horny head chub. The little red dot behind the eye is distinctive. The 2nd one is a striped shiner. The horizontal lines converge behind the dorsal fin instead of running parallel to the body.

I'd be curious to know what species that is, vacation. Sounds like you've found a good thing. I've eaten about 7 or 8 different species and they all tasted good to me, soft bottomed or hard. The risk of a noxious algae that can foul the taste is higher in soft bottomed habitats, but it's not necessarily going to happen. Almost all crayfish aquaculture is over soft bottomed systems. You don't know till you taste them.

The core finding is here I think... Another part you may be overlooking is that this also opens the door wider to the worrisome "trojan gene" risk. If adult GM fish compete effectively for spawning sites, but their young don't compete well later, that means the reproductive potential of the spawning site and the females that spawn there are diminished. Remember, one fear about these GM fish is that because they have this increased capacity for growth, they won't compete well when resources are limiting. Less "greedy" fish will have a higher capacity to survive. Earlier studies have been somewhat inconclusive about that effect. This study establishes that if fertile GM fish get to the spawning sites they will almost certainly reproduce and their funky "don't ever stop growing" genes will proliferate.

That's reasonable, yes. In the case of the Clean Water act, the standard and balance is supposed to be achieved over the language of "fishable waters". That puts anglers in the middle of the debate. Unfortunately, there is a huge demographic in the angling community that hasn't yet appreciated the value of some of their angling resources (free flowing waters, wild lands, native fish, supporting species and biodiversity) and I fear that demographic is what makes the disintegration of Federal authority so dangerous. Some people just don't care if they wipe out species or native stocks of fish if they can replace them with stocking or exotics from a hatchery. The chance that outlook rises to the fore in some of the 50 different states is much greater than in a single federal agency. Once that happens, we all miss out to some degree. As the recent hatchery/budget debate showed, the input from those hatcheries is not a guaranteed and short-sighted outlooks about sustainable fisheries could have us trade in our birth rights for messes of porridge. Once I get a minute I'll try to wade through the bill.

Farmed crayfish are among the healthiest seafoods you can eat (although don't eat any cooked crayfish with a straight tail because that means it was dead when it went in the pot and it may have bacterial issues). A normal water body should have safe crayfish. A good rule of thumb is that you can find them in numbers where fish can't get at them. Large cobble provides shelter for crayfish from predators and in clean water they will be there in high numbers, but may be a smaller average size than you like. A baited minnow trap can get a few at a time with minimal effort. You might want to open the entry hole a bit wider to let the larger individuals in. I've gotten up to 40 in an overnight set in a stream with a rusty crayfish invasion, but those aren't really in Missouri. Red-swampers and White River crayfish and other species that favor soft bottomed systems tend to be targeted more often but again, the more fish that are present in the system the fewer crayfish you will find. You might do best if you can find a ditch that you know is clean and has abundant chimneys. There are probably a lot of perched floodwaters near you somewhere now (oxbows or just flooded fields) that might be crawling with crayfish just now.

From the American Fisheries Society newsfeed: Another topic that had been of interest here before.

From the American Fisheries Society newsfeed...protecting roadless areas has been called a "taking" in here on a par with piracy. Apparently quite a few businesses in Colorado do not have similar feelings about their home state. The reality is that if you don't protect wild areas, you lose them.

I haven't looked closely enough at this bill or really do more than forward TU's opposition to it so I'm going to stick to some limited comments until I do that. Each state already has its own EPA administration which answers to the federal agency. Here's a hypothetical. The Kankakee River is one of the premier smallmouth fisheries in Illinois. Indiana, which owns the headwaters of the Kankakee has many more miles of quality smallmouth streams than Illinois, treats the Kankakee like an agricultural ditch and loads it with sediment. Currently, the perception among Illinois anglers is that sediment is impairing their fishery. The EPA is currently working on sediment TMDLs. Eventually they will get around to the Kankakee River. If there is no federal oversight, Indiana could easily adopt weak sediment regulations and the Indiana impairment to the Kankakee will go on forever. If Indiana must answer to Illinois (through Federal oversight), the problems there can be fixed. Some of this is reminds me of the MDC over-sight debate. Congress and the president have oversight over the EPA. What they don't control is the basic facts and information about environmental impacts.

Yes it does. And I might agree with your position if water and fish and pollution would just sit tight in one state. Unfortunately, they don't.

For eating or bait? Be sure not to transfer crayfish between drainages. That can lead to trouble. If you're going to release crayfish be sure they only go back into the system where you caught them.

Got this from Trout Unlimited today: http://www.tu.org/press_releases/2011/us-house-of-representatives-interior-and-environment-appropriations-bill-cuts-co They're asking for anglers to contact their congressmen to oppose this bill. http://takeaction.tu.org/c.ntJSJ8MPIqE/b.7547145/k.4EA9/Protect_our_streams_and_rivers/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx The EPA and environmental regulations as a whole are currently being attacked as "job killers". Fishing in any kind of natural environment is going to pay a steep price for that outlook if it isn't turned back immediately.