Book Review: "An Entirely Synthetic Fish" by Anders Halverson 12-17-10

An Entirely Synthetic Fish, By Anders Halverson

Yale University Press, New Haven, 2010, 288 pages, $26.00

            Down in my basement there’s a 1925 map of my home county in northwest Wisconsin, showing its lakes and streams and the species anglers can find there.  Just after the end of the logging era, the land was almost treeless, covered with endless stumps and exposed rocks.  Its streams were dramatically changed from 45 years before when logging first began, and much of its trout habitat degraded. 

            But that 1925 map of Washburn County, the “Heart of the North”, proudly extolled the number of streams where an angler could find not only the native brook trout, but also stocked rainbow and brown trout.  Little did I know the rainbows were there as a result of a half-century of effort to distribute and propagate them across the world. 

            Anders Halverson’s recent book, “An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World”, is an entertaining study of the history of stocking this hardy and enterprising native of the northern pacific rim.  Its philosophical challenge, an opportunity for self-examination for those of  us who fish trout in the Midwest or elsewhere, is the more intriguing.  If you read  it and wonder about your own trout angling preferences and what they mean ecologically, he’s probably accomplished his purpose.

            Halverson, who describes himself as a journalist and  Yale Ph.D. ecologist,  reviews the development of trout propagation in this country, a movement that sprang from the European “acclimatization” movement which thrived during the early 19^th century’s colonization efforts.  Briefly put, acclimatization meant when colonists came to an area, they strove to eliminate native species and replace  them with others they knew and could use: buffalo were replaced by cows and sheep, prairie chickens and sharptail grouse by Chinese ring-necked pheasants, and native fishes by rainbow (and brown and brook and other) trout.   I understood acclimatization when, after finding my way through invasive gorse bushes to chase “naturalized” or “wild”  brown and rainbow trout in New Zealand, I read about the early British settlers who aimed to make the country “the most English place outside of England” by bringing their familiar plants, animals and birds.

            Starting here with propagation of the McCloud River strain of rainbows in northern California about 1872, the fish were stocked across the nation by the U.S.  Bureau of Fisheries’ “fish trains” for half a century.  Trout from refrigerated tanks would be stocked in whatever stream looked promising.  The opportunity to replace native trout stocks decimated by overfishing or habitat loss, as  in my own home streams in northwest Wisconsin, met a concern that American men needed outdoor opportunities in order to continue to be manly and eager nation-builders.

            Eventually, rainbow trout would be stocked on every continent except Antarctica and would, ironically, become a target for tourists visiting from the areas whence they had come.

            The darker impacts, as we have learned, were the decimation of the remaining native fish and the reliance by fish managers on hatchery trout, mostly rainbows and browns in our area, to provide any trout fishing at all.    And as we have moved forward in trout and habitat management, many have agreed that it’s preferable to restore habitat than sink your available dollars into continued stocking efforts.   It might surprise you, or not, to know how many states still rely primarily on stocked trout rather than habitat restoration efforts to provide recreational fishing.

            Cutthroat trout in particular have suffered from the stocking, both from rainbows that interbreed with them and brooks that out-compete them.  And cutthroat restoration efforts have often prompted vicious battles among anglers, some who want to restore the natives and some who want to preserve hard-fighting rainbows.   But  it also affects brook trout, the native char in our Upper Mississippi basin.   Because some anglers prefer larger brown trout over brookies, management sometimes favors brown trout where we could reasonably expect brook trout to thrive.  Where will we set our sights?

            Well-intentioned resource managers and others endorsed stocking.  John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, endorsed stocking trout in California’s mountain lakes because it would create a constituency for the wilderness areas.  Here in Wisconsin, Dr. Increase Lapham, one of our earliest conservation leaders and resource scholars, endorsed stocking carp in the Mississippi, saying, “The day will come when the people of the state will thank the  men who have introduced and planted this extra fine species of fish.” 

            Other ecological impacts of rainbow stocking, as with many fish transfers, have only in recent decades become evident.   Stocking of trout in mountain lakes has been done by horse-hauled milk cans, by airplane a helicopter, f or decades.  Fisheries agencies assured the public those lakes were  sterile and the stocking would have no impact, and visiting backcountry anglers sought them out.  But recent studies have shown that the yellow-legged frog population, adapted to those “sterile” lakes over centuries, had developed no defenses to the stockers and were easy prey.  Now, California is stocking some lakes but removing trout from others by gillnets.

            Halverson’s book, easy reading but well-footnoted for those inclined to further  study,  should intrigue the angler who wonders why we have this variety of fish in our waters, how they interact and what impacts they have on their environment.  That angler will better understand how we got here, and be better informed as we ponder where we are going.