Michael, I'm not sure how freezing embryos would benefit Devil's hole
pupfish restoration. The fish lays eggs. Embryos are produced only
when the eggs are fertilized, of course. At that point, the best
husbandry would seem to be to grow them up to fry rather than to
freeze them. Or am I missing something about freezing them? Is it
that you think that might be a hedge, raise fry and freeze embryos for
later?
I don't think the problem-in-Devil's hole is that the habitat has
become unsuitable, though the water level has been a problem
sometimes. But isn't that solved for now-in-least? Or am I mistaken?
I was more concerned with rare fish in general than the devils hole pupfish
in particular. I am thinking of the process where by fertilized mammal embryos
are frozen for later implantation in a female of some animals of a same or
related species and grow to adult hood. does any process like this exist for
fish? They do it for people, bear, lions, elephants and other large and even
some small mammals. A similar procedure could be a hedge against completely
loosing say the Chinese paddlefish, or dwarf sturgeon or some other fish that
is very rare in both numbers and related species. I know most of you think I
am obsessed with sturgeon (true) but I am also concerned about all fish but
especially the ones that are often called living fossils dude to their long
linage. It's seems so wrong that fish that survived the extinction of the
dinosaurs are to be wiped out by thinking beings who should be able to do better.
Humans being no better than a non living, un thinking rock is somehow about
as insulting an image I can think of a human being compared to. It seems like
even when we try to do something we often wind up doing something that makes
the problem worse. The cites laws or what ever they are often do more to
cause the extinction of animals than they do to help. making it totally forbidden
to export or import a protected animals even when the importation very well
could be that animals only hope for survival is somewhat less than an
intelligent way to manage animals. I guess I am grasping for straws, some really
unusual and maybe even important animals are primed for total extinction and
humans seem to care more about the status of a fish that is so closely related
to others of it's own kind often the experts can't even agree if they are
separate species. this sort of behavior on our part might save some small amount
of diversity but it is very bad for disparity and given the choice between
saving two of three fish and two of the tree are very closely related i would
choose to save the more distantly related fish and one of the very closely
related fish. it makes sense from both an evolutionary perspective and from a
perspective of genetic uniqueness being saved. there might be 50 different
species of sunfish many of which are so closely related if they occurred in the
same habitat they would interbreed out of existence but only one species of
bowfin. If you eliminate all bowfin everywhere it is much more of a loss to the
genetic heritage of our planet than loosing one species of sunfish would be.
Just my opinion of course but a back up plan to restoring the habitat of
endangered fish would be a good idea instead of insisting on restoring the
environment before worrying about a species going extinct
Michael Hissom
aurea mediocritas
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