Wednesday November 4, 2026
Bioengineer —
Acoustic tags attached to hundreds of young Atlantic salmon have revealed a surprise in the waters of Maine: hatchery-raised smolts survived their journey to the sea at higher rates than their river-reared counterparts, a result that runs counter to much of the published literature on hatchery versus wild fish. The finding comes from a three-year telemetry study in the Penobscot River Estuary and Bay, where researchers tracked migrating smolts of both origins across roughly 100 kilometers of river, estuary, and coastal waters during the springs of 2010 through 2012.
Natural smolts were collected at the downstream bypass of Weldon dam, the first mainstem dam the fish encounter during emigration, while hatchery smolts came from the USFWS Green Lake National Fish Hatchery, which produces age-1 smolts through an accelerated growth program.