Gary H. Thorgaard – författare

Fisheries genetics researchers will find invaluable the thirty-eight peer-reviewed contributions in this book, presented at the 20th Lowell Wakefield Fisheries Symposium "Genetics of Subpolar Fish and Invertebrates," held in May 2002 in Juneau, Alaska. Looming over concerns of lost fisheries stocks and persistent erosion of genetic variability are predictions of global warming, which may further tax genetic resources. One consequence is an increased reliance on genetic applications to many aspects of fisheries management, aquaculture, and conservation. The contributions in this book are important to modern fisheries science and genetics, and illustrate the evolution of the field over the past decade. The improved technology provides tools to address increasingly complicated problems in traditional applications and ecological and behavioral studies. The union between molecular and quantitative genetics, where many of the major questions about population structure and evolution remain unanswered, will also benefit from the new technologies.

As the human population increases and nations become more industrialized, the habitat and water quality required for the survival of fish continues to decline. In addition to these environmental factors, fish populations are directly or potentially affected by harvesting, enhancement programs and introgression with hatchery-propagated or transgenic fish. To our knowledge no other scientific meeting has been assembled to consider the breadth of the problem, to review the technology that is presently available for the preservation of the germ plasm of salmonid stocks and to identify the scientific advances that are required to overcome the problems. Because many salmonids have spawning grounds within the confines of a specific region or county but will spend a large portion of their life cycle within the territorial waters of other countries or in the open ocean, the preservation of unique genes or gene pools in these animals requires international cooperation. This scientific meeting has provided a forum in which to discuss the problems, evaluate the present methods or technology for addressing the problems and suggest new directions or innovations that need to be implemented. During this meeting we limited our discussion to salmonid fishes. However, the general conclusions about the factors that affect the population dynamics of fish stocks and the technical aspects concerning the preservation of germ plasm will be applicable to other fish species.