It is apparent that the practice of mass spawning, due to its
unpredictable “sweepstakes” nature, is one of elevated risk in relation to
genetic diversity losses and potential inbreeding in future generations. It
may be possible to manage genetic diversity losses with further
intervention at spawning, such as the separation of female contributions
described here. However, this approach is not fail-safe. Cohorts
produced using this approach still resulted in elevated relatedness
values and variable family contributions. Further research must
investigate the influence of differential survival rates amongst families
in order to avoid large skews in family contributions and maximise
effective population sizes. The impact of size grading, which has not
been investigated in this study, may additionally contribute to genetic
diversity loss and warrants future
attention also.