Rainbow Trout: An Entirely Synthetic Fish

[Tim Smith]

Haven't finished reading this yet, but so far it is living up to billing.

Anders Halverson is an academic fisheries biologist from the University of Colorado who has written a detailed history of salmonid management in the continental US.

The part I'm reading now is a summary of the early motivations to promote hunting and fishing in the culture (remarkably, to promote a martial spirit among young men and make them better warriors??) and the gradual evolution of the Federal/governmental role in fisheries management.

At the center of the discussion is the early concensus that the activities of man will always destroy aquatic systems and that the only way to maintain viable fish populations is through fish husbandry (raising them in a hatchery and dumping them back into the system that can no longer support their reproduction). Halverson represents this as the first (generally accepted) environmental movement in the US and a model that is still alive and active in US politics, conservation and philosophy.

Having sat through and participated in decades of discussions around these issues I can well imagine what is coming in future chapters and I'm looking forward to the read. Here are a few passages in the early chapter of the book that set up the general premise. Here he quotes an influential politician and nature writer's views on the disappearance of trout from streams in Vermont prior to the Civil War (George Perkins Marsh):

Fishing was valued for cultural reasons...

...In consequence, by the mid-nineteenth century, fish that had once abounded had nearly or entirely disappeared from many waters in the state of Vermont. And if the fish disappeared, Marsh believed, so too would the fishermen, along with such things as "dexterity in the arts of pursuit and destruction." courage, and self-reliance. "Nor is there anything in our political condition", he declared, "which justifies the hope that any other qualities than these will long maintain inviolate our rights and our liberties." Say goodbye to recreational fishing, in other words, and say goodbye to American democracy.

And pollution from industry was killing it but no one was willing to reduce the impact of industry...

Restricting the industry and agriculture that were turning the United States into one of the most powerful contries in the world was not even worth considering. {quoting Marsh} "The unfavorable influences which have been alluded to are, for the most part of a kind which cannot be removed or controlled."

....and no one would obey game laws...

..restrictions on (hunting and fishing) would be self defeating; they would diminish the courage and self-reliance Marsh wanted to inspire....Many Americans associated game laws with the aristocracy of the old world, where only the landed gentry had the right to kill many types of fish and wild animals. "The habits of our peoople are so adverse to the restraints of game-laws, which have been found peculiarly obnoxious in all countrie s that have adopted them," Marsh wrote, "that any general legislation of this character would probably be found an inadequate safequard."

...so the solution was to just raise fish in culture and dump them into polluted over-fished streams in sufficient numbers to keep everyone happy.

Marsh asserted that industry, which was responsible for the decline (of trout) could also provide a technological fix for the fisheries through a wonderful new innovation known as fish culture.

The rest of the book explores the history, outcomes (especially unintended outcomes) of fish culture, especially the propagation of rainbow trout.

[Fly_Guy]

That sounds worth a read.

[exiledguide]

Thanks for the tip. I checked a few reviews and I am actually going to buy it unless there's not a big wait at the library.No I am going to buy it. My great grandfather, who passed away before I was born, was a commercial fisherman and market hunter and trapper in St Louis on the Missouri and Mississippi in the late 19th amd early 20th century. So anything I can read about the development of outdoor sports is of interest to me. I reaslly wish I had found out more about that time in history, The more I find out yhe more thankful I am for what we have today and the more I want to pass it on in better shape.

[Outside Bend]

I picked it up last week at the library and have been working on it, definitely a good read so far.