An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World [Kindle Edition]

I know little about fish or fishing, but I know fisherman like to go for rainbow trout, a good fish to have at the end of your line or to have in your frying pan. The rainbow trout is found all over our nation, and stands for conservation, and unspoiled waters, and the bounty of nature when nature is not trammeled by humans. Except that it does not really stand for any of these things. Maybe fisherman know all about this already, but for me, the revelations in _An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World_ (Yale University Press) were a surprise. The author Anders Halverson is a journalist, and has a doctorate in ecology, and likes to fish. He has hunted all through historical documents of government and conservation organizations, and interviewed plenty of researchers and others who have helped make the rainbow trout ubiquitous, or who are now trying to reduce its range. This is not just a fish book. It is a carefully written history of how we think about our natural resources, and about the paradoxes and dangers of trying to control the natural world.

Rainbow trout are native to waters feeding into the Pacific, in an arc that extends up from northern Mexico, though the northeastern states, and over to far eastern Russia. That doesn't matter anymore. They have been introduced to the Atlantic states, and in fact to every state. The only reason they aren't in Antarctica is that there is a lack of trout streams there; they are now on every other continent. A century ago, American fishing gentlemen were convinced that standing by a stream with rod and line was going to maintain our citizens' virility and make our democracy stronger, but fish like the eastern brook trout were not able to withstand the pollution and higher temperatures we were inflicting on our streams. These men shunned the bottom-feeding catfish. They simply needed a better trout, and the rainbow was it. The states with streams to be stocked thought this was all dandy. A recent report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that if you spend a dollar on growing and stocking rainbows, you can expect thirty-two dollars back in hotel reservations, rod sales, and airplane tickets. Everyone knows (now) that if you move a species into a region in which it did not evolve, you are liable to change things in unexpected ways. Though rainbows were often imported with the idea of adding their diversity to the local fauna, they have decreased such diversity overall. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has acted intentionally to decrease the diversity so that the rainbow trout could prosper. In 1962, the service deliberately poisoned sections of the Green River in Utah and Wyoming with "piscicide" to get rid of the pesky fish that lived there naturally. There were some complaints by academics and ecologists at the time, but the chemical got dumped in the river, and the antidote that was supposed to be dumped downriver to neutralize it and keep it from heading on through National Parks properties didn't get there, and so there was even more of an ecological disaster. This was made worse as a public relations matter because three weeks later Rachel Carson's _Silent Spring_ was published, infuriating some constituents who would not let their representatives in Washington hear the last of it. There were four species of "trash fish" that were to be killed to let the rainbows in; all are now on the endangered species list.

Halverson's book, however, is not shrill about the many preposterous and presumptuous tinkerings with the environment that have been done for the sake of bringing more rainbows to our streams. There are few villains or fools in this story of the century since this unnatural fish has been taking over the world's fresh water systems. Many of the public servants profiled here, whether their decisions were good ones or not, were taking steps based on the best information they had at the time, with the intention of helping anglers, and with no prospect of making any material gain by their actions. Halverson tells many connected stories here in a convincing and fascinating book, and generally refrains from making judgments or regrets. There are inherent paradoxes anytime humans try to take control of nature. Fishermen may think that they are escaping from civilization by getting back to nature to pursue their prey, but it turns out the fish that many are pursuing are mere products of industrialization after all.

This book blew me away. Incredible storytelling, amazing history. I'll never look at trout the same way again. If you like to fish or have any interest at all in environmental history and our relationship with the natural world, this book is a must read. I'd highly recommend it.

Sometime within the past ten years or so I became interested in native fish. I have nothing against any species, I just like to see fish that are "supposed" to be in a watershed, in that watershed, not some other species occupying that water. This desire to find native species in their native range has taken my fishing buddy and me to some out-of-the-way little creeks--we're talking about places in the middle of the desert 100 miles from the nearest town. Creeks whose widths are measured in inches, not feet. But it doesn't seem to matter where we go, how far away from "civilization" we get, we still come across water stocked with non-native species. Many of these places were stocked long before motorized travel was possible. And I've wondered what possessed people to stock fish in such places.

Anders Halverson's new book, An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World, answers that question for me. In a fascinating look at the social and political maneuverings of the late nineteenth century through the present, Anders' meticulous research lays bare some interesting tidbits of the stocking policies of the United States.

One such gem is that the government was worried about the strength of the nation's men: that they had "notoriously less hardihood and endurance than the generation which preceded [their:] own" (George Perkins Marsh, congressman and diplomat from the mid-1800's). This description was given in a report by Marsh under the auspices of the Legislature of Vermont on the Artificial Propagation of Fish. He further stated that "the sports of the chase" (angling being one of them) was a way to increase the hardiness of the Americans. At this time, many waterways were already seeing a decline in fish numbers and the artificial propagation of fish was seen as a way to increase those numbers. With the urge to increase the robustness of its men, and the decline fish population the underpinnings were there for the introduction of non-native species.

Last year Eccles (from the Turning Over Small Stones blog) and I had a discussion about the terms "Fish and Game" and "Fish and Wildlife" as used in various agencies: Why were the terms "fish" and "game" separate? Shouldn't it just be Game or Wildlife, as in "Utah Game" or "US Wildlife Service" since fish are a type of game and fish are a type of wildlife? Anders informs us that by the 1870s congress formed the United States Fish Commission to help tackle the problem of declining fish stocks, thus becoming the first governmental agency involved with animal husbandry in the US. At a later time, the "game" and "wildlife" were added as the agency expanded. So, in my mind at least, this solves the mystery.

How the rainbow trout became the darling of the US Fish Commission, and just about every other angling agency in the world, is an interesting tale that Anders starts in San Francisco in 1872 with Livingston Stone looking for spawning salmon. He eventually found the McCloud River and began propagating salmon. By 1879 they were looking for a place on the McCloud to begin propagating trout as well. And they did, with astounding success.

Besides the historical ventures Anders skillfully and delightfully takes the reader on, he also dissects the biology of the stocking programs, covering the hardiness of a stock that is constantly used for breeding to whirling disease. He discusses the loss of native species and the response (or lack of it) of individual state fish and game departments, how some of them have switched from stocking to conservation.

This brings up an interesting problem that many fish and game departments need to tackle: what is their responsibility when sportsmen (who pay for licenses whose money is then possibly used to bankroll conservation and restoration instead of stocking), clamor for more catchable fish?

Through all of these topics Anders uses a reporters zeal for facts (there are approximately 475 sources listed in the bibliography) and detachment, thereby keeping an even keel on reporting the facts and not stepping on a soapbox to expound one particular side over another. Even with this professional detachment, there is a keen sense of understanding and compassion shown for the stories he tells. For, if nothing else (but there is a lot of "else"), the book is full of stories told with the storyteller's art.