By Craig Springer/USFWS

A network of seven Fish Technology Centers exists to help the National Fish Hatchery System to hone its efficiency. Tech center scientists develop technologies to produce healthy, genetically diverse fishes and aquatics organisms best adapted for restoration and recovery efforts. Work of the tech centers reaches well beyond federal hatcheries, providing our conservation partners with applied science support in biostatistics, population ecology, and genetic analyses. Technology developed in the Fisheries Program benefits aquaculture, public and private, by reducing costs and enhancing quality, and improving overall fish culture operations.

Private John Allen National Fish Hatchery, MS, is named after the representative who appealed to the Congress in his famous ‘hatchery speech’: “Fish will travel overland for miles to get into the water we have at Tupelo . . . thousands and millions of unborn fish are clamoring to this Congress today for an opportunity to be hatched at the Tupelo hatchery.” Today, quality water helps ensure a quality brood stock of gulf-coast walleye, the only one in the nation. Behemoths like paddlefish, alligator gar, and lake sturgeon are cultured there for restoration projects.

It takes healthy fish for good fishing, and healthy ecosystems. The Service’s nine National Fish Health Centers implement the National Wild Fish Health Survey, detecting and mapping where fish disease pathogens occur in the wild – and where they don’t. The work is integral to conserving America’s fisheries; the survey gives natural resource managers an effective fish management.

Paddlefish range through the big rivers all across the Mississippi basin. Overlay the artificial political boundaries and you can readily see why there’s a need for coordinated management of fish renown for wandering far and wide. The National Paddlefish Database administered by the Carterville and Columbia fishery resources offices track paddlefish population stats, allowing federal, tribal, and state fish and game agencies to make informed management decisions, including raising fish at several national fish hatcheries from North Dakota to Louisiana.

Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery, Maine, is the oldest continuously operating hatchery in the U.S. Established as a private hatchery during the same year Congress created the U.S. Fish Commission, 1871, Craig Brook has cultured 21 different species. Today, it’s focused on conserving six river-specific sea run populations of endangered Atlantic salmon. This fry-rearing station works with Green Lake NFH to rebuild Atlantic salmon populations in Maine.

The National Broodstock Program was established in 1970 to ensure a consistent and adequate supply of distinct strains of trout eggs from four species. Disease-free, genetically sound eggs produced at the broodstock hatcheries – Allegheny (PA), Ennis (MT), Erwin (TN), Iron River (WI), Genoa (WI), Norfork (AR), Saratoga (WY), Sullivan’s Creek (MI), and White Sulphur Springs (WV) – go to dozens of states, tribes, other hatcheries, and research facilities. These eggs support the production of millions of fish for recreational angling, species recovery and restoration, mitigation, drug registration through the Aquatic Animal Drug Approval Partnership, Tribal subsistence fishing, and other fisheries activities – making significant contributions to the economy, local and national.

It’s not just another acronym. HACCP, short for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points is a quality-control method used in the Fisheries Program to prevent the spread of invasive species. This leading-edge planning concept isn’t new to government; it has its genesis in NASA through Pillsbury Foods ensuring early moon mission food was contaminant-free. Fisheries field stations are adapting the systematic planning principles of HACCP to manage pathway contamination risks and prevent spread of unintended species.