Sea Bass vs. Salmon

[Ron Sheldon]

Hardy
In the wild both sea bass and Salmon would fail the hardiness test. Sea Bass survival in the wild is about 1% and Salmon is about 3%. However, in the hatchery, Both Sea Bass and Salmon survival jumps up to about 95%. Furthermore, Sea Bass are tolerant to a wider array of water quality parameters than Atlantic Salmon.

Endowed with an inborn liking for man
Neither are particularly fond of mankind. They maintain their avoidance even after extensive culturing.

Comfort-loving
Both respond well to being fed commercial feed. However, Sea Bass require a separate culture of rotifers and artemia during their initial stages where Salmon transition easily to #0 or #1 mash feeds as their yolk sacks are used up. Salmon and Sea Bass are easily contained in tanks and net pens when introduced to them as juveniles. However, neither likes being confined when placed in either straight from the wild.

Able to breed freely
Neither are very dedicated parents. Salmon expel their eggs and sperm into a redd and hope for the best. Sea Bass also scatter their eggs about in a similar manner, but they spread them out over several areas. In the wild neither has a high success rate as they rely on volume over quality in reproduction. However, In the hatchery environment Salmon are much easier to spawn. When they reach senescence hatchery workers can easily mix milt and eggs and then incubate with fairly high success rates. Sea Bass on the other hand require chemically tricking the fish to release their eggs. The Sea Bass eggs are microscopic and difficult to work with where the Salmon eggs are large and easy to work with.

Needful of only a minimal amount of feeding
Neither the Sea Bass nor the Atlantic Salmon are particularly good at converting food in wild conditions. This can be overcome in the hatchery with high quality foods and manipulation of water temperature. But as a wild stock neither would fit the requirement of requiring the minimal amount of feeding.

[bmmatala]

I do not completely agree with this post only because I think that the Atlantic Salmon would prosper because it passes almost all of the criteria that Francis Galton mentioned in the text of the book but I do agree because I do not think the Seabass would prosper.

[smoswald2]

I agree with you that each species has pros and cons when considering how easy it is to raise them in captivity. It’s also important to consider, as you highlighted, how behavior changes when wild fish are placed into captivity, versus when they are hatched in captivity and then raised.

[imatsui]

I liked how you compared their behavior change in wild and captive environment. I thought salmon can be better candidate but the details you brought up about sea bass characteristics are very important and was interesting.

[hmbaird]

I think it’s interesting that you used flat survival rates to outline lack of hardiness, because my first instinct was to look at the physical aspects of salmon and sea bass to see if they seem like they can withstand a lot, but it makes sense to look at the numbers to truly show how unlikely the individual offspring are to survive. I also appreciated the detail you gave in giving lots of different criteria to judge the fish from. It’s too easy to just look at one or two things from an outside perspective and make a quick judgement on stuff like this.

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