Why can’t we just release a ton of fish fry to replenish populations?

Question

We can breed fish by the thousands in farms, yet populations in the wild are dying out. Why can’t we just dump tons of fish fry/larvae into the waters they normally live in, and some will get eaten and some will live, and replenish the populations artificially? Fish aren’t particularly caring parents, so unlike releasing a bunch of lion cubs or something, it will resemble what happens in the environment.

Edit: I’m talking about overfishing specifically here, not climate change or natural diseases or whatever.

In: 5

Answer 1

Not all fish are easy to farm. Some need very specific conditions to grow. It might cost an unreasonable amount of money to farm some fish if the only intent is to repopulate.

It also matters *why* their population is dropping. If the problem is just some natural phenomenon, sure. If it’s overfishing then this could work with fishing restrictions in place. But what if the reason the population’s dropping is because a Samsung factory in Austin dumps a few hundred thousand gallons of chemicals into the water? We’d spend a lot of money farming fish just to dump them in poison water. It’s a waste of effort and just the cost of having an economy I guess.

Or what if the reason for depopulation is that climate change has made the conditions unfavorable? Again, we’d be raising a ton of babies just to kill them. We’d have to do something about climate change to fix it so they’re just going to have to go extinct.

This is also sidestepping that most of the time when we try to mess with ecosystems, there are side effects we couldn’t predict. The amount of plants, prey, and predators in a region is a delicate balance. Releasing thousands of new versions of any one of those could wreak havoc. Too many plants can accelerate algae growth and kill off the fish that normally feed on them. Too many prey fish eat up too much of the plants which can make conditions unfavorable. Too many predators eat up too many prey fish and create other problems.

So it’s better to not pollute, do something about environmental harm, and let nature heal itself than to fiddle with it. There are definitely some populations we replenish, but it’s a slow and careful process because we don’t want to shock ecosystems.