Galton's Criteria

[jltusten]

According to Francis Galton’s criteria species that would be good for domestication include those that have hearty meat, can be domesticated (emotionally), are comfort loving, are able to breed freely, and need only a minimal amount of tending. I don’t know of any fish that meet all of these requirements, it seems unlikely that one would exist that checks all the boxes. However, Atlantic salmon are significantly better candidates than the european sea bass. For one, salmon eggs are visible. In addition, they have hartier meat, and need significantly less tending than the bass which need to have their genomes altered to be properly accommodated and to breed. However, despite that populations of domesticated salmon tend to do well, they do not breed freely, and therefore only spawn once a year. They also aren’t particularly comfort loving, nor are they partial to people, so already they don’t meet three of Galton’s criteria. In my opinion however, as far as aquaculture is concerned, salmon are good candidates because they meet two of what I think are the three most important aspects of Galton’s criteria. These are: they require minimal tending, and they have hearty meat. The other one being that they can breed freely. When working with aquaculture it isn’t necessarily important for a species to be either comfort loving or emotionally attached to people because they’re just being raised to be eaten. Because this is the case with aquaculture salmon’s hearty meat and minimal amount of tending needed they are good candidates. Bass, however, in my opinion are poor candidates because they have lean meat, do not have emotional attachments to people, aren’t necessarily comfort loving, can’t breed freely, and need constant tending. Basically as stated in Four Fish, bass were one of the worst fish to pick to try and domesticate.

[sdensmore]

The answer and opinion to if Sea Bass and Atlantic Salmon are good enough candidates and high quality formed aquaculture? Simply put I believe that the bass is far too delicate and elaborate for the genetical program, and the Atlantic Salmon have their own issues as well, plus the Bass being high maintenance and fragile, is ultimately not a good candidate. However looking at the potential of the European Sea Bass species as they currently enjoy their amazing reputation all over Europe, from zootechnic and having them try and master artificial breeding to fattening. Now there are a lot of pros to having domesticated bass but I feel that the cons outweigh them, for starters, there are a limited number of production sites (especially along the French Coast, in direct competition with tourism space and use) plus a very competitive European market, also not to mention size of the farmed fish is apparently too small to enable filleting or prepared dishes. Species with slowed growth and low fillet yield 40%. They would also contain diseases such as nodavirius, vibriosis, and pasteurellosis which is non transmissible to humans, but still they are diseases overall. As for the Atlantic Salmon, they are far more hardier of a fish to withstand domestication and are a more durable breed, but are still quite difficult to construct in aquaculture, so my final say is no both forms of fish would not be good candidates for the engineering process.

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