As the number of wild Atlantic salmon returning from the ocean to the eight Downeast rivers being considered for Endangered Species Act listing declines to a few dwindling dozens, some 5,500 of their true brothers and sisters are swimming around in circles within sight of shore. They are healthy, near-fully grown adults, almost ready to go forth and multiply.

They may never get the chance. For, although they sprang from the same egg and sperm as their struggling siblings, these fish were raised to maturity in aquaculture pens. And that undesirable upbringing, according to some involved in the long, ongoing and failing salmon restoration effort, makes them genetically and behaviorally unfit for release.

In 1998, the Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery at Orland gave the aquaculture firms Atlantic Salmon of Maine (ASM) and Connors Brothers 2,500 and 3,000 fertilized eggs, respectively, that had been mated using egg and sperm from salmon broodstock taken from the Dennys, East Machias and Machias rivers. This was part of a cooperative effort between aquaculture and the federal hatcheries called for in the state conservation plan agreed to by the state and the Department of the Interior a year earlier. It is part of a state decision in 1995 to involve aquaculture in solving the salmon problem.

ASM and Connors raised these eggs to smolts at their hatcheries and to adulthood in their ocean pens, all at their considerable expense. These fish will be ready for release next fall and a subcommittee of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the Atlantic Salmon Commission has proposed a stocking plan for the depleted rivers.

That plan needs the TAC’s endorsement, and some TAC members object. Although these fish are built from the same genetic material as their wild counterparts, a primary concern is that their farm upbringing has somehow corrupted them, made them fat, lazy, unlikely to survive, unwanted. Since farm-raised fish tend to spawn a few weeks later than truly wild fish, they might lay their egg masses, redds, on top of the wild redds. They might, though fat and lazy, outcompete the wild for food.

Valid concerns, but given the decades-long failure of the current restoration effort — the federal government has spent in excess of $100 million in Maine since the 1960s — they seem small and scientifically hairsplitting compared to the real possibility that the 29 wild salmon that returned to the eight rivers last year may soon be reduced to zero.

The current effort uses juvenile fish, smolt and fry, and it simply is not working. The survival rate of smolt to adulthood is estimated at 50,000 to one, meaning that the 155,000 smolt released into the Narraguagus last year might, if all goes well, yield three adults. It is time to try a different approach and the release of healthy, disease-free adults that can trace their lineage directly to wild salmon is that approach. Also, these farm/wild fish will be tagged — after one spawning season they will be fair game for recreational anglers.

It is unfortunate that this entire salmon restoration effort, so well stocked with educated and committed experts, has degraded into needless and presumably unwarranted charges and countercharges of ulterior motives and power seeking. If the TAC does not approve this plan, or a reasonable modification of it, this unproductive diversion will escalate. Those who see the entire endangered-species proposal as a thinly veiled attempted to drive aquaculture from Maine will have new reason to think so. A deal, a pledge, between the state, the aquaculture industry and the federal government will be broken. The age-old argument of nature vs. nurture will be taken to a new level of absurdity.