Decide the fate of the fish

In single pickets in support of Oleg Sentsov, you can meet a fish farmer from Dmitrov, cand. Biol. The sciences of Alexander Rectubratsky and his brother Nikolai. Alexander became the author of the petition “We demand the exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners” at Change.org. But the Trv-hunger was interested in the scientific activity of Alexander and the All-Russian Research Institute of Freedom Fisheries, where he works. Talked by Natalia Demina .

- How did you become interested in fish farming? Were an avid fisherman in childhood or why?

- Indeed, aquarists or fans of fishing most often go to ichthyologists and fish farmers. But my brother and I inherited fish farming. Our parents are ichthyologists, after the end of the Department of Ichthyology, Moscow State University participated in the Amur expedition for several years, which was organized in the fifties of the last century, the Correct organized. USSR Academy of Sciences G.V. Nikolsky. Since childhood, my brother and I listened to parents' stories about this expedition, about the Far Eastern fish, about adventures on the seas, lakes and rivers. About how they drowned, met with bears and criminals freed from the camps in 1953, as Nivha was saved, carried away on an ice floe with the harness of dogs to the Tatar Strait. But all these adventures ended safely, because they happened before our birth.

We were born in Dmitrov near Moscow, but shortly after our birth, our parents left to work in the Crimea, at the famous Karadag Biodestation. In the summer, many Moscow biologists came there, but for some reason only future academics of Altukhov and Pavlov were remembered. I remember Scorpen, Stavrid, Bulls, Barabul and Shark Katran from fish. Delphins were studied at the biostation, it was very interesting, we all the time spun next to the pool, where they were contained.

Then the parents divorced, my mother returned to Dmitrov with us and got a job in the All -Russian Research Institute of Pond Fisheries (VNIIPRH), it is located nearby. Dad worked in Armenia in Sevan, and then returned to Moscow State University and worked at the Mozhaisk reservoir. The work of both parents took place before our eyes, and when they grew up - with our participation and help.

In Sevan, I remember beautiful local fish - trout Ishkhan and chubby. At the Mozhaisk reservoir, we learned many freshwater fish, learned how to install networks and ride a motor boat. At that time, many large eels lived in the reservoirs near Moscow. The eels in the rivers of the Volga basin are not found, they said that they were a return gift of de Gaulle Khrushchev, who gave the French Siberian sturgeons.

The institute, in which Mom, VNIIPRH worked, has an experimental pond economy on his side, we rode boats there and learned the main fish of domestic fish farming - carp.

When it was time to study at the institute, we entered the Timiryazevo Academy, to the Fisheries Group of the Zooinenerian Faculty. We were taught to breed not only fish, but also all other agricultural, from bees to horses. We liked it. In practice, we worked as a cattle on dairy farms, since then I really loved the cows and thought that if I was not lucky with the fish, I would return to the cows. But with fish I was very lucky in my life. I worked all my life in VNIIPRH, in the laboratory of genetics and fish selection.

In the work of the fish industry, and especially the breeder, which I am, is a fairly powerful positive emotional aspect, which is due to the fact that we constantly take living fish in our hands - during clips, sorting, when receiving caviar. However, unfortunately, one has to be God when it is necessary to inspect the fish and solve its fate.

- Do fish have intelligence?

- Yes. I am not a specialist in this field, I will not call specific research right away. But here I remember that Natalya Nikolskaya studied the ability to teach with silver crucian carp dipped and triloid. Fish has no polyploid gigantism, and the size of the cells in triloids is still larger than the dipliads. Accordingly, the number of cells that make up different organs has less triloids than the dipliads. This applies to nerve cells. So, Nikolskaya showed that the triploids are stupid than dipliads. If it is proved that there are fools, then there is intelligence.

- Do they distinguish colors? Do they know how to communicate?

- The colors of the fish, of course, are distinguished. Otherwise, why would they need a bright marriage? If communication is the transmission of information, then fish can communicate. They transmit information both visually and at the chemical level. Let us recall, for example, how a large flock of fish synchronously behaves, where all individuals simultaneously perform the same maneuver. The wounded fish emit pheromone anxiety that scares away the rest. Not always communication is good. So, peaceful fish feel the smell of predators and try to escape more. Predators should be more chemically silent.

- How diverse are the methods of reproduction of fish?

- Oh, very diverse. In fish, they are much more diverse than in mammals.

Most fish are propagated by ordinary sexually, when males and females are needed for reproduction.

However, some species and forms are propagated by parthenogenesis (more precisely, gynogenesis ), when the development of descendants is carried out only at the expense of maternal heredity. The male chromosomes are excluded from development. Occasionally, the opposite situation is possible: development is carried out androgenetically , that is, due to only the paternal nuclear heredity. In experimental conditions, the frequency of androgenetic development is quite easy to increase. In this case, the genotype of androgenetic fish can be compiled by spermatozoa of two different males. Such ability of fish can be envied by people, and not only homosexuals.

In addition to separately, among fish there are species with consistent and even synchronous hermaphroditism, capable of self -excretion.

Females of most fish lay unfertilized eggs in the external environment, where males are inseminated, which also sweep sperm into the water. However, there are also viviparous species that bear embryos in the body cavity.

There are fish that produce large eggs, they switch them in small quantities, but then they guard the embryos and larvae from predators. Other species produce millions of eggs, trying to solve the problem of successful reproduction not with diligence, but by number.

Some species glue their eggs to plants, others to the stones, while others spawn in the water column, releasing embryos into free swimming.

- Is it true that Soviet ichthyologists tried to withdraw Soviet crucian carp? Did they come out?

- Yes, they tried, but they did not succeed. In 1947, the laboratory of the genetics and selection of VNIIPRH K.A. Golovinskaya and D. D. Romashov opened natural gynogenesis among silver crucian carp. Natural gynogenesis is a special method of propagation, in which development is carried out only under the control of maternal heredity. In this case, insemination is necessary, however, the chromosomes of sperm are inactivated in the egg cytoplasm and do not participate in development control. The gynogenetic offspring of silver crucian carp is represented exclusively by females, since only maternal half -determining factors inherit. Successful work on the study of gynogenesis among fish was interrupted in 1948 after the August session of the vasculin, but they did not go unnoticed by the specialists of the Lysenkovsky call. In the early 1950s, VNIIPRH was carried out on the creation of the “Soviet crucian carp”, in which, in full accordance with the dogmas of Lysencoism, the heredity of the gynogenetic shape of the silver crucian carp “shaken” with the help of “crosses” with the carp, and the resulting offspring were “raised” in the direction chosen by educators. However, the laws of nature turned out to be stronger than political expediency, and the crucian carp remained silver, without having to intervene in the "Soviet".

- Why did Karp become the most important object of experiments of ichthyologists?

- Because it is tasty, unpretentious and growing quickly. It was the wild ancestor of Karp - the carp was the first fish that the man domesticated, and in Japan and China, it is believed that this happened quite a long time ago - more than two thousand years ago. Later, at the beginning of the 19th century, in Japan, in the province of Niigat, decorative forms of carp were bred - koi , which have a different color: red, orange, white, black. Now, thanks to their beauty, koi spread around the world.

European carp is first mentioned in the works of Aristotle entitled "Kuprinos". According to one version, this name goes back to the goddess of love Aphrodite Cyride, which Karp received due to high fertility and noisy spawning games. Later this name is Latinized into the generic name of Cyprinus carp. The species name, Carpio, came to the carp from the Celtic “Carf” (fish) at the time when the Celts inhabited the shores of the Danube on the territory of modern Austria, Hungary and Slovakia.

In Europe, carps were the first fish to grow in artificial ponds built under monasteries already in the early Middle Ages (V - VI centuries). The center of carpation has become the areas adjacent to the shores of the Danube. Sazanov caught in the Danube also transported alive to many European countries, including England. Great Britain is not part of the carp, but the carp in medieval England was quite common. Shakespeare in Hamlet mentions Carp as a well -known fish. So, the “flat cunning” of Polonium says: your bait of falsehood takes this carp of trub (“The lining of lies caught the carp of Pravda” [M. Lozinsky's lane]).

According to other sources, carp in Europe was domesticated even earlier. This was done by the Romans, who delivered the carp from the Danube in wet moss and then bred in special fish -water cages - pussinaries. The unpretentiousness and vitality of the carp made it possible to transport it alive over long distances.

In the Soviet Union, Karp was the main object of fish farming, or, as they say, aquaculture. The share of carp among all the fish grown was more than 80%. Soviet breeders created several good breeds, which were preserved to our time.

Carp is a thermophilic fish and does not tolerate the long cold winter of the middle and northern parts of Russia very well. The work of the outstanding geneticist and breeder V. S. Kirpichnikov on the hybridization of carp with the Amur carp made it possible to increase its winter hardiness and spread bugwoods through the territory of the entire European part of Russia and a significant part of Siberia.

In recent decades of carp in the aquaculture of Russia, trout and sturgeons have been supplanted, but now its share is about 60%. Naturally, most of the studies of industry research institutes are also devoted to the main object of aquaculture.

- In one of the conversations, you mentioned that you know Sergey Adamovich Kovalev since childhood and as a scientist. How did it happen?

-My dad in 1969-1972 was the deputy director of the Moscow Experienced Fish-Fleet-Meliorative Station, and when Sergei Adamovich was expelled from Moscow State University, he got a job at this station. Together with several other employees, Sergei Adamovich was studying the stimulating effect of small doses of chemical mutagenes for the survival of the embryo of fish, carp and a bit. Vyunov was provided for work by Alexander Aleksandrovich Neufach from the Institute of Development Biology, and the carp was studied in the field, in a tent camp, defeated near a large pond in one of the state farms near Rzhev. For two summers, my brother and I lived in this camp. Sergei Adamovich had a great influence on us, at that time of faithful pioneers. Somehow the conversation came about Pavlik Morozov.

- So you could tell the police that your dad is listening to the Voice of America? - Sergey Adamovich asked us. - And Pavlik was able to.

Another time, I began to say something about our enemies Americans. Kovalev’s replica struck me, I still remember her:

“Why do you think that Americans are not the same people like us?” He asked.

At the end of the summer, when my brother and I returned home to Dmitrov, Sergei Adamovich was supposed to deliver us to the Savyolovsky station and put us on an electric train. After that, he was going to take the article about working with mutagenes to the editorial office. At the station, one of us was lost, and in the turmoil Sergey Adamovich forgot the manuscript in a telephone booth. Interrupting the search for the brother, we began to look for the manuscript, but did not find.

- The Serbian poet and writer Milorad Pavich have several interesting aphorisms about fish. You do not comment on one of them: “He told the children that there are fish in the seas that can withstand only a strictly defined amount of salt. And if the water turns out to be more salty than they tolerate, they begin to cloud the mind. The situation is the same with us. Because human happiness is like salt. When there is too much of it, you lose your mind ”? How does the fish react to salt and is it true that the freshwater fish will die in salt water and vice versa?

- Indeed, most species can live only in certain narrow framework of salinity. But there are others, eurigaline. Born in fresh water, young salmon and sturgeons are not afraid to go for fish happiness to the salty ocean.

- What is the situation at your institute now? How does its budget develop? What is the ratio of state money and extrabudgetary financing?

- Five years ago, our institute, which did not have budget financing, was close to complete bankruptcy and death. The fact is that the aquaculture in Russia compared to Soviet times significantly reduced production volumes, and the existing scientific detention was then quite enough to extensive fish farming. We tried our best to maintain our main property - the breed of carp and sturgeons. The Trinity Option helped us, printing an article on the need to preserve domestic breeding achievements [1].

Now the situation has changed, although I would like the reason for the change to be different. One way or another, in 2014, the state realized that the aquaculture, especially in the conditions of food sanctions and the economic crisis, is a strategically important industry. We were transferred to budget financing, they began to regularly pay salaries. And, most importantly, the threat of the death of our breeds is gradually moving away.

Extra -budget financing has also now grown significantly, but it is largely formed not at the expense of contracts with fish farms - the volumes of fish cultivation began growth, but still low - and at the expense of scientific services that we provide industrial enterprises that affect natural reservoirs.

- What is the topic of your own research? What is the problem that occupies you at present?

- My theme includes two directions. This is experimental embryology and practical selection of carp and sturgeon fish. Sometimes these two areas can be combined in one work, for example, in studies of hybrids of silver crucian carp and carp, which are interesting both as fish farming objects and as fish with unusual biological features.

As for the very recent works, I would like to have time to finish the development of technology of genetic regulation of gender in sturgeon fish. We are still at the very beginning, the work is long and technically complex, but the result is offspring, consisting only of females that give black caviar, very tempting.

Alexander River
Talked by Natalia Demina

1. Rectibratsky A. Fish question // Trv-hunger No. 145 of January 14, 2014, p. 15.