I'm just...silenced. In awe of our stupidity. Dumbfounded. I know someone here will support this. Let me just call you an asshat now and get it over with. Asshat.

the one thing i miss about Alaska is the salmon.
i believe thats the only thing i miss about that awful state.

And my paycheck is to be called "a tidy sum".

they call row after row of planted pine trees a "forest" here in the deep south.

If women were having problems having babies, this would be like us growing babies in bottles, calling it natural birth, saying, "Look at all the babies being naturally born. These women don't need help," and give up trying to help them.

Anybody following me here?

Bush policy shift outrages environmentalists

Obvious tag anyone?

um...crappy headline...yeah

Fry-cooks to be called welders.

"Those salmon are wild."

If we say it enough, it becomes true. Welcome to America.

Wow. Next thing your know our administration will be calling burger joint jobs 'manufacturing' gigs to help raise some numbers.

I would like to release my swimmers in Terry Hatcher.

Yeah, PN. That was sarcasm.

We always went trout fishing on Thursdays. They stocked the river with the farm raised trout on Wednesday night. Those stupid fish would strike at anything ( an empty hook) and there was always plenty to eat for Thursday supper.

First person to post the "Mission Accomplished" image gets a swift kick in the ass.

~Berj

Pocket Ninja,

*zing!*

Maybe when they say 'wildlife' they mean 'party animals'

/ducks

another one of those "don't worry, be happy" precious moments from the bushies. A neat redefinition of terms and
suddenly dramatic declines in fish stocks and have magically been erased making major bush donors very happy.

Next thing you know they will be redefining our occupation of Iraq as a "liberation" instead of response to an imminent threat of saddam using WMD against us.

Good thing Americans are smarter than that and know a scam when they see one

doesn't everyone agree the this 700 million dollars would be better spent on enticing good teachers with high salaries for inner-city/high-risk school districts?

What this administration seems to be missing is that it's not the actual fish that really matter...the fish are symbolic of changes that are heading our way (notice how I avoided using the pun "upstream"!)

You can keep replacing dead canaries in the coal mine...

Hatchery fish are higher in mercury than wild, so pregnant women are supposed to avoid them and eat wild.

In other news, Bush to be called "intelligent".

Dr.Knockboots
You either love Alaska or hate it. After 25 years instate I still love it. The fishing is what makes it even better for me.

Seems like calling farmed fish wild is like calling free range chickens pheasant

flinchn - I agree that the money could be better spent. I mean, $700 million a year for some stupid fish? Of course, if we hadn't screwed up their natural habitat in the first place, we wouldn't be having this problem. I'm no wind-kissing hippie environmentalist, but this is just stupid.

My favorite part about these "wild" salmon is the food coloring they are fed to make the flesh orange like the "other" wild salmon that get that color through their natural diet.

The Columbia river is so full of wild salmon that you can walk across the river on their backs!

Now that they declared the "bridges across" the river to be "the backs of wild salmon" and "driving" has been reclassified as "walking".

They need to reclassify all the Shad in the Columbia to be "Wild Salmon" then they would never have to worry about extinction.

I'm reminded of when Reagan treid to get ketchup declared a vegetable.

flinchn: more money for teacher salaries? no thanks.. the more you pay them, the worse they get. ask Connecticut if having the best paid teachers is helping their education system as their schools fail.

I have to wonder why the government is spending money to fix a problem created by big businesses. The Gov't should be taking the heck out of the people who caused the problem in order to solve it, instead of passing the buck. The reclassification rules are total BS as well.

If I had a link to the mission accomplished pic, I'd post it...

I'm still dumbfounded at the stupidity of this administration..

If you're interested in what real environmental science is doing to save our fish stocks as opposed to Bush's "science", check out this month's Wired. Great article on the future of replenishing fish stocks.

/still dumbfounded at the stupidity of this administration.

Once again the Bush administration is pissing down our back and telling us it is raining.

Saw this early this morning wanted to post but could think of nothing that what show just how stupid this is. I am glad the headline writer was able to establish the utter nonsence of what they are trying to do.

The wild salmon are heard yelling. BRING EM ON!!!!

Stunned at the stupidity.

Oh and tomorrow is the anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" incident BTW.

If you can touch them, they're real.

Maybe I just don't get it... but, aren't these the same species of fish, just one is born in a man-made tank and then placed in the river with the other fish? What does it matter where the fish were born? Haven't they done the same thing with other species (condors and wolves come to mind) where they are born in captivity and then released into the wild? Is the goal not to increase the numbers of the specific species of fish, and does this not meet that goal?

There is absolutely no substitute for fresh seafood.

And with that comment, a plug for my favorite restaurant in the entire world:

http://www.hymansseafood.com/

If you're within 500 miles of Charleston, South Carolina...one of the most gorgeous cities in the country...it is a moral imperative that you stop what you are doing at this very second and drive there as fast as physically possible. Check out the accolades and celebrity fans. It's been consistantly voted in the top 3 or so seafood restaurants on the entire east coast.

Damn...I wanna go to Charleston now...

TheGoblinKing:

Huh huh huh. "Hymen seafood".

/had to be said

This administration has mastered the cynical manipulation of the news cycle. Don't solve anything - change the definition of the problem. And fark the media for playing right into it.

Haven't people been buying more wild salmon lately because of the lower mercury levels? So how do you tell now?

Hey Sandy,

Are you posting in the right thread....?

When my bro was living up in Alaska he would send me an ice chest full of whole Copper River Salmon once a year. Oh My God! The best damn Salmon I ever had, deep deep red and very lean. As a "native" he was allowed to use a dip net to pull them out of the river on their way upstream. Just scoop em up. Now he lives in Australia and he sent me a pouch made from an kangaroo's nutsack. I'm not complaining but the salmon was way tastier.

Who's Hatchery Salmon?

You ate the kangaroo's nutsack?

Fish harvested in a fish farm don't taste as good as wild fish. Fish hatched in a fish farm and then set free in the wild become wild fish. They are genetically identical and end up being indistinguishable from fish that were born in a stream. Fake boobies are not real because they are plastic, or silicone. Fish set free in the wild are not made of plastic, or silicone. Fish are made of fish. If they spend their entire lives in a fish tank, they are weird fish, eating pellets. If they are set free and learn to live in the wild, they are normal fish, eating bugs and stuff.

I left out the part about how the Wild salmon is an incredibley delicious thing to eat and the "wild" salmon is a sort of mushy approximation. Once you go Copper River its tough to go back.

I kid, I kid. But it had to be done.

JangoFet

Well.....tasted might be a better word. Just trying to be above all those arbitrary food barriers that we impose upon ourselves..
Kangaroo Nutsack or Sows Belly. Who am I to say who is right and who is wrong about what tastes good unless I try new things? For instance..Who knew I would like fried pig skins?

mmm, fake boobies

Some of you are confusing farm-raised salmon with hatchery salmon. They are not the same -- not even the same species for that matter. The color and mercury content of hatchery salmon released into the wild is identical to that of salmon spawned in the wild.

That said, it is a laudable goal to attempt to increase the numbers of naturally spawned salmon. However, the failure to take into account the large number of hatchery fish that have been released into the wild makes the actual picture more bleak than what it really is.

2004-04-29 11:28:10 AM modernhamlet


My favorite part about these "wild" salmon is the food coloring they are fed to make the flesh orange like the "other" wild salmon that get that color through their natural diet.

I think people are getting "farmed salmon" and "hatchery salmon" confused. If a salmon is hatched in a hatchery, released to the wild, and leads the same sort of life as a salmon that was hatched in the wild, what's the difference? On the other hand, if a salmon is raised in a fish farm and never released to the wild, it is a very different fish (taste-wise at least)