http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99458498
There are nothing new about "catch and release", neither does the artificial selection in our agriculture or poultry industry. You want something to grow big, grow fast and produce more eggs? No problem! Combine Darwin's natural selection and Mendelian breeding principle and other modern genetic theories from Dr. Fisher, Dr. Falconer, Dr. Williams etc. The modern genetic and breeding programs in our animal science can do pretty much everything for you. Whiting Farm (dryfly hackles)is the first one put this exercise into our sport - flyfishing.
So how about catch and release? What it to do with the artificial selection? Well... as a hunter, a predator, we are doing the selection when we hunt and fish. The number and the quality of the prey we kill will influence the population dynamic, or the evolution of the population. (Sorry, I will try not to use too many jargons.) This is a simple idea. If we only eliminate the big animal as a trophy hunter does. The individual carries those "big genes" will be eliminate from the population, will be less contribute to the future generation. This will give the little guys advantage to breeding more and ultimately change the size of that population, or that species. This idea seems simple but it is hard to document in the nature. because there is not a single gene to determine the size. Usually, "size" of those morphological characters such as human height, weight... are determined by several genes. or several group of genes. We called it quantitative trait (QTL). Also the environmental factors such as nutritions, habitat quality etc will also influence the morphology of the animals. Back to "catch and release", there are still debating among the fisherman that if catch and release is a moral issue. well... I will get into that in another post. But now, the catch and release means, we are minimizing the artificial selection, so the population should maintain their balance, their original trajectory direction in evolution... (to be continued) Here is the NPR talk! Great talk! LINK
3 comments:
Great read...I always believed that big fish produce big babies...so I always released the biggins. In truth, they probably eat more trout than they produce!
Is this art work your own. It's cool!
Thanks Hansy,
Ha... that is true! They eat a lot... but it is sort of population control... I guess you have bigger monster trout in NZ ....does it? : )
Yes, those are my illustrations...
Great blog. It's good to read about the scientific aspect of fishing from someone in the field. I also got a chuckle, reading about C&R and a recommendation to read Dr Fisher... but that might just be me. Keep up the good work!
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