Parentage-based tagging combined with genetic stock identification is a cost-effective and viable replacement for coded-wire tagging in large-scale assessments of marine Chinook salmon fisheries in British Columbia, Canada.

Wild Pacific salmon, including Chinook salmon , have been supplemented with hatchery propagation for over 50 years in support of increased ocean harvest, mitigation for hydroelectric development, and conservation of threatened populations. In Canada, the Wild Salmon Policy for Pacific salmon was established with the goal of maintaining and restoring healthy and diverse Pacific salmon populations, making conservation of wild salmon and their habitats the highest priority for resource management decision-making. For policy implementation, a new approach to the assessment and management of Chinook salmon and the associated hatchery production and fisheries management are needed.

Insights on the concept of indicator populations derived from parentage-based tagging in a large-scale coho salmon application in British Columbia, Canada.

For Pacific salmon, the key fisheries management goal in British Columbia (BC) is to maintain and restore healthy and diverse Pacific salmon populations, making conservation of salmon biodiversity the highest priority for resource management decision-making. Salmon status assessments are often conducted on coded-wire-tagged subsets of indicator populations based on assumptions of little differentiation within or among proximal populations. In the current study of southern BC coho salmon () populations, parentage-based tagging (PBT) analysis provided novel information on migration and life-history patterns to test the assumptions of biological homogeneity over limited (generally < 100 km) geographic distances and, potentially, to inform management of fisheries and hatchery broodstocks.

Variation in migration pattern, broodstock origin, and family productivity of coho salmon hatchery populations in British Columbia, Canada, derived from parentage-based tagging.

In salmonid parentage-based tagging (PBT) applications, entire hatchery broodstocks are genotyped, and subsequently, progeny can be nonlethally sampled and assigned back to their parents using parentage analysis, thus identifying their hatchery of origin and brood year (i.e., age).

Comparison of coded-wire tagging with parentage-based tagging and genetic stock identification in a large-scale coho salmon fisheries application in British Columbia, Canada.

Wild Pacific salmon, including Coho salmon , have been supplemented with hatchery propagation for over 50 years in support of increased ocean harvest and conservation of threatened populations. In Canada, the Wild Salmon Policy for Pacific salmon was established with the goal of maintaining and restoring healthy and diverse Pacific salmon populations, making conservation of wild salmon and their habitats the highest priority for resource management decision-making. A new approach to the assessment and management of wild coho salmon, and the associated hatchery production and fishery management is needed.

Population differentiation determined from putative neutral and divergent adaptive genetic markers in Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus, Osmeridae), an anadromous Pacific smelt.

Twelve eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus, Osmeridae) populations ranging from Cook Inlet, Alaska and along the west coast of North America to the Columbia River were examined by restriction-site-associated DNA (RAD) sequencing to elucidate patterns of neutral and adaptive variation in this high geneflow species. A total of 4104 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were discovered across the genome, with 193 putatively adaptive SNPs as determined by F(ST) outlier tests. Estimates of population structure in eulachon with the putatively adaptive SNPs were similar, but provided greater resolution of stocks compared with a putatively neutral panel of 3911 SNPs or previous estimates with 14 microsatellites.

Distance-based population classification software using mean-field annealing.

We describe a distance-based clustering method using a proximity matrix of genetic distances to partition populations into genetically similar groupings. The optimization heuristic mean-field annealing (MFA) was used to find locally optimal solutions where exhaustive search was not possible. To illustrate this method, we analysed both simulated and real data sets.

Comment on "Declining wild salmon populations in relation to parasites from farm salmon".

Krkosek et al. (Reports, 14 December 2007, p. 1772) claimed that sea lice spread from salmon farms placed wild pink salmon populations "on a trajectory toward rapid local extinction.