The CAST initiative, to give a really quick overview for those who aren't familiar with the CAST program, involves industrial partners, academia, DFO, the Atlantic Salmon Federation, other NGOs, and first nations. There's a whole suite of projects lined up for the Miramichi watershed. The projects that are being laid out for the Miramichi watershed are going to serve as models, as innovative programs where that knowledge can be transferred to other watersheds.
One of those projects being proposed is adult supplementation. It's a smolt-to-adult supplementation program. It's about collecting wild smolts in the spring on their way out to the ocean, taking those wild smolts into the Miramichi salmon hatchery, where I think you folks are going to be visiting tomorrow, growing those fish to the adult stage, and then releasing them back into the river.
This is an innovative project, but it is an experiment. The Atlantic Salmon Federation's concern is that we want to make sure that it is run as an experiment and not as a full-fledged stocking program. This will be the first time such a stocking initiative actually has a large-scale assessment.
We're going to be looking at how well those fish are interacting in the hatchery, from the time they go into the hatchery to the time they leave the hatchery. There's going to be a lot of tracking involved with these fish, too, to see how they develop mate choices with the true wild fish, how their offspring interact, and all the way back from the offspring leaving the river and coming back to the adult stage. We want to make sure that it's done in an experimental fashion, a controlled fashion, because we don't know what the outcomes would be for this. We want to make sure there's no harm done to the river during this phase.
It is innovative in the sense that there's not a whole lot of time spent in the hatchery. That's one of the innovative stages, because for hatchery programs in general, the more time a fish spends in the hatchery, the worse off it is when it's released back into the wild. This is minimizing the time spent in the hatchery. It's more or less to see if this will actually give the wild population a boost while we research reasons as to why the salmon is declining. It's a band-aid, and it should be a short-term initiative. Once this experiment is completed, we will assess it to see whether or not it works. If it does work, then it's something that you could have in your back pocket for the Miramichi if there's a need for it.
There probably isn't a need for a full-fledged stocking program right now, but by putting this in your back pocket if it does work, it's something that could actually be applied to other river systems. There are other similar projects going on right now, one in the inner Bay of Fundy, but that's a stock that has been completely decimated so there's no harm, no foul, with that one. On the St. John River above Tobique, there's a very similar program that they're doing there as well.
That's all I have to say. If there are more questions or you want more clarification, I don't mind.