In support of the emerging industries of warmwater marine fish mariculture, genetic engineering and classical genetic improvement programmes have been initiated for a variety of exclusively marine fish. These programmes have the potential to perturb allele and genotype frequencies, or introduce novel alleles and genes into conspecific wild populations. Despite concerns to the contrary, the following hypothesis remains to be falsified: 'laboratory induced allele frequency/genotype changes and novel alleles or genes have a negligible probability of being selectively favoured in wild populations under natural selection, and accordingly, without sustained large scale releases, have little potential for ecological impact'