EFFECTS OF CONSERVATION REARING STRATEGIES ON LIFE-LONG FITNESS FOR INNER BAY OF FUNDY ATLANTIC SALMON Salmo salar.

The number of species assessed at some level of risk of extinction continues to increase. As a result, programs to captive rear and release wild-origin individuals are also increasing in number and scope in attempts to lower risk of extinctions. Salmon population trends in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans characterize this situation well. Despite considerable efforts in the development and implementation of various combinations of captive rearing and re-introduction programs, undesirable effects of domestication resulting from captive exposure are cited among the factors most limiting program success. As part of a collaborative program, we quantified the effects of two long-standing conservation rearing strategies on life-long and transgenerational fitness in a population of endangered Atlantic salmon in Atlantic Canada.

This is one of the first works on an endangered species to follow a specific population from commonly applied recovery strategies and then report effects on life history and a suite of fitness measures over 4 years spanning an entire lifecycle. This is also the first published account of rearing endangered Atlantic salmon in a commercial aquaculture setting for conservation goals. This is a notable milestone in conservation methodology that with further study, could present powerful capacity to match the increasing demand for population recovery actions relative to traditional conservation methods. We demonstrated that manipulating early life exposure impacted fitness for an entire lifecycle and across generations. These findings will be of interest to a society that increasingly looks to captive-assisted recovery programs to produce individuals which are fit for producing self-sustaining populations in the wild to avoid extirpation.