Biodiversity of hatchery broodstock.

[Member]

This subject has been mentioned in another thread and has been raised previously but was lost in the site crash.
Does any one has any facts on what hatcheries actually rotate their brood stock and sourse them from different areas rather than inbreed all the time ?.
Is there a an Australian Standard or best practices guideline that they adhere to?
Do the different stocking assns check this as part of their criteria for purchasing fingerlings or just purchase from the cheapest supplier?
I know that Kurt Hutchby had a good input into the prev thread and I think Bill proctor and Gwen from the sunshine coast were also mentioned.
Cheers
Ray

[Member]

I know that a few hatcheries are using previously stocked fish in their breeding programs, as it is difficult to source some brood stock.

Its not something I think would be an issue for stocked fish themselves, as long as the they were not constantly turning over fish they are breeding themselves to act as the new breeding stock (Which I have seen some pig farmers do).

It may be a big issue with impoundment fish that escape in to the wild and breed  over a period of years. (I'm not naive enough to assume there are any remnant wild bass populations below most of our stocked dams in south east Qld.)

[Member]

yeah ray
we use broodstock collected from the wild (sourced generously from j mitchell, j wilhelm and myself) for the genetic diversity issues that souround our impoundment (lake awoonga).  we are one of the only impoundments apart from a few  (in the barra stocking groups) that have stocked fingerlings exclusively from wild caught broodstock, and the current fisheries management plan will continue this for the future.  we rotate broodstock completely every 2 years for the genetic reasons.


cheers
kh