O. Mykiss
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So I’ve been reading this book–“An Entirely Synthetic Fish” by Anders Halverson. I’m going to make a run at getting him on the podcast, because this book is a must-read for absolutely every trout fisherman.
Many trout anglers do not realize just how artificial their target fish are. I run into a lot of anglers down here in the South who don’t even realize rainbow trout are non-native. (For the record, brook trout are native to the mountainous parts of the Eastern U.S., cutthroats mostly to the Rocky Mountains and some Pacific drainages, and rainbows mostly to the rest of the Pacific drainages, especially California. Meanwhile browns are native to Europe.)
This book chronicles how and why rainbow trout became the most widely stocked fish in the world. It also takes you swiftly and engagingly through the shifting landscape of game management (for example, scouring the Green River with rotenone to make way for “better” rainbows in the 1960s).
So far what I have enjoyed the most has been the biological history of the trout themselves. For example, Onchornychus mykiss, which I titled this post. Anyone know what it means?
Sure, it’s a rainbow trout, but why the hell does it have such a gibberish name? Originally the name was just mykyss, actually, in a tribal language on the eastern shores of Russia, where it was first discovered by a Westerner familiar with Linnaean naming in (I recall) the 1760s. He named the trout Salmo mykiss, which was as close as he could come in Latin to “mykyss salmon” (and interestingly it looks like the word is pronounced closer to “mickiss” than to “my kiss.”)
The rainbow stayed in the Salmo or European salmon/trout family (i.e. brown trout – Salmo trutta, and Atlantic salmon – Salmo salar). Then in the 1980s scientists got access to genetic information and quickly figured out the rainbow trout was properly a Pacific salmon, which makes sense as that’s where its found.
What then does Onchornychus mean? “Hooked nose.” Actually a great descriptor of the fish, isn’t it? So the rainbow trout is really just the hook nosed mykyss. And we’ve got some completely forgotten Russian tribe to thank for that.
I strongly recommend this book.
Zach
Says the guy who works in a lab all day.
You guys have seriously never wondered why a rainbow trout is called “Onchorynchus mykiss”?
Zach
Bought it on kindle last night. Started reading. My friends and wife think I am an OCD nerd also. They are just jealous!
Have yet to read this book but very interested in the topic. Modly Chum did an awesome pod cast with Halverson about 6 months ago (episode 35). After listening a few things occurred to me – First, I will read this book. Second, so much of our pursuit of trout is manufactured. Third, I gained a renewed appreciation for the magical times when I am privileged enough to pursue truly native salmoniods. Whether they be salmon or bows in Ak, or brook trout in the East or cutties in the West. There is a qualitative difference in the total experience.
KbI’d love to hear a podcast with Halverson, Zach. He’s published at least one journal article, too, on the history of stocking and tried to come up with estimates of just how many fish we’re dumping into the various waterways in this country.
I borrow liberally from Halverson’s history for introductory material when I talk about my research, as context for why I’d be interested in trout stocking in the southern Appalachians. Besides the great shots of Dundrearies, I particularly enjoyed the early sections of the book, in which he describes the mentality of assisted natural selection that drove a lot of the initial stocking efforts. It’s pretty valuable context for anyone working with management decisions, today, to see just how faddish the “science” was in those early years.
And don’t sweat the nerd cracks. I’d have been lost in my -ology classes without the 6 years of Latin I took in high school, and I still can’t keep names straight without working backwards from the characters to the sci-latin. As a student, I heard a great story of a professor who told all his classes, “Don’t be offended if I don’t learn your names; every time I learn a student, I forget a fish.” (Perhaps appropriately, I’ve forgotten to whom that quote should be attributed.)
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