7
TROUT-SALMON, Continued*
food that the young red salmon needed# The
answer to this new problem was to let the
trout multiply until they knocked down
tho stickleback population. This proves
that you can’t be sure of friend or foe
until you do some fact-finding. Loose eggw
in a stream are likely to be infertile
and lost and might as well be eaten by
trout—also, a lot of those little fish
in a trout’s belly aren’t salmon#"
According to Rhode tho FWS has been
urged to kill trout, bears, gulls, mer
gansers, beluga whales, seals, sea lions,
and other species of animals end birds#
"We know all of them prey to some extent
on salmon," Rhode admits,, "but it’s cer
tain they have to live mostly on something
else because salmon are not available the
year around. When you get right down to
it, almost everything and everybody preys
on something, and man is the biggest pre
dator of them all#
"Or take the much-maligned sea lions.
There’s a lot yet to be learned about them
but we do know sea lions eat lampreys. Yet
a fortune is now being spent in the Great
Lakes to eradicate lampreys because they
have decimated the lake treut. bhen game
fish declined even further in a Texas lake
after garfish had been removed, sportsmen
made the- belated discovery that the gars
actually ate turtles and it was the tur
tles that had been feapting on. bass and
curppiol It isn’t wise to just start con
trolling because of surface appearances
alone.
"Control of predators can be a very
tseful tool, but we have learned to ap-•
i- — .——■— — ..
proaeh it with a bit of caution# Before
any program is developed, some research
must be undertaken to find out fast what
should be done and how to accomplish it
without destroying benefioial species#
The old system of paying bounties on ’
trout tails wasji*t such a howling suc
cess* It resulted in killing thousands of
trout which were not even in salmon wat
ers# Elsewhere, much of bounty money was*
actually paid out for salmon tails#”
Now the FhS is besieged by Alaskan
sportsmen to do something about getting
more trout into streams and lakes. Sport
fishing is rapidly developing into on©
of Alaska1s biggest industries and, ac
cording to a recent survey, resulted in
a multi-million dollar expenditure in the
Territory last year#
The summer the FITS is sending a team
of biologists to the Bristol Bay aria to
study the trout-salmon relationship here*.
”If control of trout is indicated, it
will be conducted in specific waters on
specific species and not as a blanket
operation," Bhode said,
bhiie nelly \araen trout are permitted
to be tn&eu for commercial purposes in
salt water, cost-of-proauction vs price
received has not been favorable to deve
loping a significant operation#
An old couple went to the zoo end saw
two kangaroos# One of the keepers strolle<
over and said, "They are natives of Aus
tralia, you know#"
"You donrt Ray," gasped the old lady,
"And,to think-that my poor sister married
one of them,"
tstt* ti
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