BOOKS ET AL.

ECOLOGY people fi shed, the more money there was for making fi sh. Hatcheries became popular fi x- Hatching a Mongrel Species tures throughout the West. Halverson quotes an offi cial from state who courted Jared Farmer controversy when he proposed closing more than one hatchery—what you get if “you ainbow ( 1) used to be a Pacifi c industry. After the failure of Pacifi c salmon cross a sacred cow with a military base.” Rim fi sh. In historic times, the numer- introductions, the station experimented with Until recently, hatcheries cared more Rous discrete populations from Baja (a congener). Agents placed about self-perpetuation and customer satis- to the Kamchatka fertilized eggs between layers faction than science. Their measure of suc- Peninsula could be grouped of wet moss in boxes with ice cess was the “return to creel”—the number into two ecological types, An Entirely Synthetic Fish blocks and shipped them by of fi sh taken home by anglers. To increase stream trout and anadromous How Rainbow Trout transcontinental railroad. the return, fi sh and game departments got in trout (which migrate from the Beguiled America and Rainbows became suc- the habit of announcing the dates and times sea to freshwater to spawn). In Overran the World cessful invaders for three of rainbow releases. Thus, in the span of a America, the latter populations by Anders Halverson main reasons: they make few hours, a fi sh might travel the full circuit became known as steelhead. good game; they can toler- from hatchery pond to delivery truck to open Yale University Press, New Starting in the late 19th cen- Haven, CT, 2010. 279 pp. $26, ate warmer and siltier waters water to outdoor grill. In 1949, California tury, Americans added a third £20. ISBN 9780300140873. than can other game fi sh; and pioneered the use of surplus military aircraft type, hatchery trout. Like the they grow well in hatcheries. to aerially stock alpine lakes with rainbow, original rainbows, these fish In the 19th century, the spe- brook, and golden trout. This kind of biologi- could travel long distances to spawn, but they cies appealed to acclimatization societies cal bombing is still practiced throughout the expended no energy of their own to do so. (who wanted to increase what we now call West. Thankfully, state offi cials no longer Instead, people served as their vector, trans- species richness) and river renovationists eradicate native fi sh using chemicals such as

Rainbow trout.

porting them in trains, trucks, airplanes, and (who shared the goals, if not the techniques, rotenone. Alverson chronicles one egregious milk cans. Today, rainbow trout can be found of later restorationists). Eastern anglers, pre- episode from 1962 when and on every continent and in every climate; it dominantly elite white males, also wanted to poisoned the entire upper watershed of the is the most ubiquitous stocked game fi sh on encourage sport fi shing as a way of promot- Green River (some 15,000 square miles), Earth. These planned introductions, like all ing “American” values and manliness. Rain- creating a clean slate to be fi lled with trout. things human, have produced unplanned con- bows had a Goldilocks effect on fl y fi sher- They called it “rehabilitation.” sequences. men, notes Halverson. European Before environmentalists made an issue of According to Anders Halverson, almost were too hard to catch, eastern too rainbows, Trout Unlimited complained about all hatchery rainbows share some ancestry easy. Rainbows were “just right.” After biting annual stocking. The group had no beef with in a Northern California broodstock from easily at the surface, they fought the reel with non-native fi sh; it just wanted “wild” rain- the McCloud River—now an arm of Shasta aerial displays. bows rather than the latest hatchery product. Lake. There, in the 1870s, the U.S. Fish Com- In the 20th century, a governmental appa- As Halverson explains, much of the restock- mission established a hatchery, initially for ratus grew up alongside trout stocking. The ing was in fact a waste. Bureaucrats assumed Pacifi c salmon. Conservationists back East state-level hatchery system in the United that streams needed to be replenished each wanted to import western fish to restock States can be compared to its local highway year, and they had the budget to do that, so streams degraded by agriculture, logging, and system, in which taxes on gasoline funded they did. A contrarian fi sh biologist employed road construction, which encouraged more by the state of demonstrated fuel consumption. Similarly, state hatcheries through electroshock censuses in the 1960s The reviewer is at the Department of History, State Uni- versity of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA. E-mail: were funded from fi shing licenses and a spe- and 1970s that the maintenance of population

[email protected] cial sales tax on fi shing equipment. The more levels came not from restocking per se, but U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE CREDIT:

48 2 APRIL 2010 VOL 328 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS BOOKS ET AL.

from attrition caused by the contest between which promises a discussion of the rainbow’s uates and trout enthusiasts, An Entirely Syn- resident and incoming trout. After some wild global diaspora (including self-sustaining pop- thetic Fish may have gotten it “just right”— public hearings, Montana conceded to sci- ulations in New Zealand and South Africa), sciency enough, not too scientifi c. ence, stopped stocking its rivers, and focused Halverson rarely ventures outside the United instead on reservoirs where rainbows could States. The author is mainly concerned with References and Notes not reproduce. Montana has since developed the impacts of hatchery rainbows on fi sher- 1. Scientifi c names of taxa mentioned in the text: rainbow and steelhead trout, mykiss (formerly a healthy tourist economy around the quality ies in the inland West. He merely nods to the Salmo mykiss); golden trout, O. m. aguabonita; Pacifi c of its catch-and-release river fi shing rather issue of genetically modifi ed farmed trout. salmon, collectively, six species (chum, O. keta; pink, O. than its gross creel rate. Chile, the world’s leader in rainbow aquacul- gorbuscha; sockeye, O. nerka; chinook, O. tshawytscha; did things differently. It stuck ture, appears nowhere in the text. coho, O. kisutch; and masu, O. masou); cutthroat trout, O. clarkii; greenback cutthroat, O. c. stomias; brown by its hatcheries even after their rainbows Halverson works best in his journalis- trout, Salmo trutta; brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis. became infected with whirling disease. The tic mode when he travels to western alpine 2. W. Allendorf, R. F. Leary, Conserv. Biol. 2, 170 (1988). Centennial State now stocks a new rainbow watersheds to interact with “fi sh squeezers,” 3. J. Nichols, in Preserving Western History, A. Gulliford, Ed. (Univ. Press, Albuquerque, 2005), hybrid that is disease-resistant. The hope is wardens, and ichthyologists. Through trips pp. 263–271. that the hybrid will pass on its resistance to and interviews, Halverson entertainingly 4. J. E. Taylor, Making Salmon: An Environmental History of rainbows in the wild. Meanwhile, Colora- introduces some of the most tangled ques- the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Univ. Washington Press, Seattle, 1999). do’s greenback cutthroat swims in dangerous tions in conservation biology: What is a spe- 5. J. Lichatowich, Salmon Without Rivers: A History of the waters. The greenback is one of numerous cies? What is native? What is natural? What Pacifi c Salmon Crisis (Island, Washington, DC, 1999). subspecies of cutthroat trout native to the inte- is wild? His account does not pretend to be 6. R. Scarece, Fishy Business: Salmon, Biology, and the rior West, island populations left from wetter a source for defi nitive answers or theoretical Social Construction of Nature (Temple Univ. Press, Philadelphia, 1999). geologic periods. Several of the cutthroats, contexts. For a deeper discussion of many of 7. T. P. Quinn, The Behavior and Ecology of Pacifi c Salmon including the greenback, are federally listed the same issues, the curious can seek out sev- and Trout (Univ. Washington Press, Seattle, 2005). as threatened. The legality of this is debat- eral recent books on Pacifi c salmon (4 – 7). able, because it is hard to defi ne what the spe- But for casual readers, including undergrad- 10.1126/science.1188526 cies is anymore. DNA testing has shown that nearly every cutthroat population has to some BROWSINGS degree hybridized with rainbows. In Halver- son’s words, “Rainbow genes have become Oceanic Anglerfi shes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. Theodore W. Pietsch. their own entity.” He repeats a 1988 warn- University of California Press, Berkeley, 2009. 569 pp. $85, £59. ISBN 9780520255425. ing from cutthroat experts that the trout of the The cold, dark, nutrient-poor ocean waters below 1 km are home to a surprisingly abundant and North American West could homogenize into diverse clade of anglerfi sh, the ceratioids. These bizarre predators use a bacterial light organ on the a single taxon, “Salmo ubiquiti” ( 2). tip of their fi rst dorsal spine to lure prey within reach of their gaping mouth of raptorial teeth. They In the wake of environmentalism and con- are also extremely sexually dimorphic; males attach servation biology, some agencies (notably themselves (sometimes permanently) to the much the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the larger, bloblike bodies of females. After detailing California Department of Fish and Game) “seadevil” diversity, evolution, and distribution, Pietsch have tried to ameliorate the damage caused discusses bioluminescence, locomotion, feed ing, and by trout introductions. In the high Sierra reproduction. He then comprehensively reviews the , native amphibians, especially frogs, suborder’s families, genera, and 160 known species cannot coexist with non-native fish. Para- (such as Himantolophus appelii, left). Although written doxically, California still stocks many Sier- for fi sh biologists, this profusely illustrated account ran lakes, and advertises their locations, even should inspire wider interest in these fascinating as it actively removes all fi sh from other non- hobgoblin fi sh. disclosed lakes. Fishers legitimately ques- tion whether it is fair to apply their user fees Fishes of the Open Ocean: A Natural History and Illustrated Guide. Julian Pepperell; and tax dollars toward the eradication of their illustrated by Guy Harvey. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, Australia, 2009. 272 pp. A$54.50. ISBN 9780868407005. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010. $35, £22.50. ISBN favorite catch. 9780226655390. Halverson, an avid angler, seems well Relatively few fi sh species are found in surface waters (down to 200 m) far from land. But these equipped to tackle his topic: he has a Ph.D. in include the largest, swiftest, most prolifi c, and farthest migrating fi sh. Some are permanent residents, aquatic ecology and experience in journalism. some spend part of their life cycles at sea, and others What he lacks is training in history, and that are only occasional visitors. Pepperell begins with short shows. Broad-scale cultural, political, and discussions of food webs, morphologic adaptations that economic developments get shallow treat- have independently evolved in several groups, and the ment. Halverson prefers to use biographical impacts of commercial and sports fi sheries. The remainder fi gures to propel his narrative. It is surprising, of the book summarizes the identifi cation, distribution, then, that he writes so little about the perva- and biology of all major open ocean species, including sive stocking done by private citizens—char- billfi sh, tuna, mackerels, jacks, and pelagic sharks and acters such as Finis Mitchell, the Wyoming rays. Harvey has painted each species; many are also man who almost single-handedly stocked presented in informative underwater photographs (right, hundreds of fi shless lakes in the Wind River yellowfi n tuna, Thunnus albacares, prowling the surface).

CREDITS: (LEFT) THEODORE W. PIETSCH/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON; (RIGHT) C. & M. FALLOWS/SEAPICS.COM/COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES PRESS UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (RIGHT) C. & M. FALLOWS/SEAPICS.COM/COURTESY PIETSCH/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON; CREDITS: (LEFT) THEODORE W. Mountains (3 ). In spite of the book’s subtitle,

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