Friday, April 5, 2013

An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World



An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World by Anders Halverson (Author). Anders Halverson offers an exhaustively researched and grippingly rendered account of the rainbow trout and why it has become the most commonly stocked and controversial freshwater fish within the United States. Found in the distant waters of northern California, rainbow trout have been artificially propagated and distributed for more than a hundred thirty years by government officers wanting to current Individuals with an opportunity to get back to nature by going fishing. Proudly dubbed “a completely artificial fish” by fisheries managers, the rainbow trout has been launched into each state and province within the United States and Canada and to each continent besides Antarctica, typically with devastating results on the native fauna. Halverson examines the paradoxes and divulges a variety of characters, from nineteenth-century boosters who believed rainbows could be the saviors of democracy to twenty-first-century biologists who now seek to eradicate them from waters around the globe. Finally, the story of the rainbow trout is the story of our relationship with the natural world-the way it has changed and the way it startlingly has not.


What an important read! As a freshwater fly fisher and a fish culturist that makes my living elevating trout and salmon in a hatchery, I could not put this e-book down. Incredibly nicely researched, Anders paints a vivid, straightforward to learn yet intriguing timeline of the environmental historical past of the trout and the way it evolved to be, fly fishing in the nineteenth century, the formulation of conservation groups like Trout Unlimited, and our fashionable fish and recreation businesses each the states and US Fish and Wildlife Service. He covers matters reminiscent of how, and why, rainbows, browns, and brook trout had been moved throughout the nation (and the globe). He contains many very fascinating photographs that really painting the times, comparable to a horse drawn cart loaded with milk cans that are crammed with trout eggs standing in front of the Washington Monument still under development; pictures of the primitive hatchery incubation methods, and modified rail cars that shipped trout eggs throughout the nation. Anders delves additional through time to the twentieth century to debate matters like the evolving views of fish and recreation businesses towards native and non-native fish species, the usage of rotenone and the introduction and penalties of illnesses like Whirling Disease. I found the writer to be fair and unbiased in his reporting and summarization. This e book will endlessly remain in my library, it is a interesting, detailed story of how trout came to be in North America. I extremely advocate this read to any trout or freshwater fisher, aquaculturist, biologist, state, federal or private ambassador for fish and wildlife.

This book blew me away. Unimaginable storytelling, amazing history. I will never have a look at trout the identical means again. If you happen to prefer to fish or have any interest at all in environmental history and our relationship with the natural world, this e book is a must read. I would highly advocate it.

An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World
Anders Halverson (Author)
288 pages
Yale University Press; 1ST edition (March 2, 2010)

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