You can probably skip this post, but if you have time to kill while avoiding the heat, keep reading. As I recently wrote, I have joined the board of the Oregon Hatchery Research Center and attended my first meeting where one of the PhDs recommended this article, A commentary on the role of hatcheries and stocking programs in salmon conservation and adapting ourselves to less-than-wild futures, published May 31, 2024 in Fish and Fisheries. It was cause for contemplation and triggered a rant, below. If this is the sort of thing that we are going to discuss at OHRC meetings it will be an interesting board to serve on.

To summarize, the paper acknowledges that the best available science overwhelmingly concludes that hatchery salmonids are genetically inferior to wild populations. Nevertheless, the authors argue that given our rapidly changing climate, available habit, and projections for the future, conservation hatcheries should play a role. “We adopt a future-oriented lens to interrogate the role that hatcheries may play in salmon conservation at the advancing edge of climate change impacts.” That’s a tortured sentence, but it expresses their position.

It’s a dense 11-page document, but worth reading if you like this sort of thing. There’s no denying that many salmonid populations are teetering on the brink and the sort of massive changes required to save them are not coming fast enough. Do we do everything we can to tear down dams, restore habitat, reverse global warming, etc., to save current wild populations? If this fails what is our fallback position? How can we even define “wild” today and will that be useful in the future? Should conservation hatcheries play a role? I don’t know the answer but it’s worth thinking about. It’s also interesting that this is recommended reading for the OHRC board.

Now for a rant. As an undergraduate I studied political science and received a degree in philosophy. That was not the end of my university experience but those classes laid a foundation for how I look at the world. I was enthralled as the professor in my first political science class explained how professionals create their own language to signal membership in their profession and create an aura of superior understanding and exclusiveness. He recommended that we quickly do the same.

This paper is an excellent example of this, much to its detriment. Here’s a sentence in the paper’s abstract, “We draw on the concept of adaptive epistemologies within the context of conservation-oriented hatchery and stocking programs to critically reflect on knowledge paradigms and values that underlie salmon conservation stocking efforts and the changing ecosystems in which they are situated.”

I know what epistemology is, the study of knowledge, i.e., what can we know and how can we know it, but “adaptive epistemologies”? Give me a break. All knowledge adapts as we learn more. “Knowledge paradigms”? What a convoluted way of writing. There are many examples of this in the paper. The authors really should take a writing class or at least read Strunk and White’s, The Elements of Style, and follow one of the key rules to omit needless words.

In my mind, the authors failed attempts to sound wise while torturing English greatly diminished their work. Perhaps their goal was to impress a thesis committee or otherwise advance their careers. I’d rather see fisheries scientists working to advance public understanding and influence policy. Sadly, this paper was not as useful as it could have been in that regard.