We Really Have Our Work Cut Out For Us...
Note: The images associated with this post are online advertisements and not necessarily the actual magazine cover. Apparently, the covers are usually sans excerpts.
An advertisement for the April edition of a national sporting publication recently caught my eye. It featured a picture of a rainbow with the caption, “The Quest for Native Brook Trout.” I wondered if it was just a coincidence, so I checked out another dozen or so ads for the same publication online. In all cases, the species art reflected the species named in the primary excerpt. Even other species of fish matched…
To be fair, species misidentification in media, including sporting media, is not unique to fish. I’ve seen a moose misidentified as elk, whitetail deer misidentified as mule deer, and black bear misidentified as grizzly bear. But the problem seems much more prevalent with regard fish, and especially trout.
When species misidentification involves trout, more often than not it is specific to native trout, and brook trout in particular. I don’t see brown trout depicted as rainbow trout, or rainbow trout depicted as brown trout. I haven’t seen cutthroat misidentified either. While it may happen, I’ve never seen bass misidentified as pike, or vice versa. And I’ve never seen striped bass misidentified as bluefish.
Why does this happen with trout? Has generations of state-sponsored and private stocking confused the masses? Is it because the fishing media, industry, and advocacy machine promotes nonnative trout over native trout and has for decades? Maybe the fact that many state fish and game agencies lump all species of trout under a single generic name, “Trout,” has something to do with it.
Maine Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Inland Fishing Laws…
New Hampshire certainly confused anglers when for decades they refered to all trout under the term “Brook Trout” in rule and statute. NH NFC worked for two years to get this changed, and while they no longer refer to nonnative brown trout and rainbow trout as “brook trout,” all trout including brook trout are now refered to as “Trout”…
Why are brook trout the most frequently misidentified species? And why aren’t we misidentifying cutthroat trout? Is it because while we are dangerously tolerant of nonnative trout in native brook trout water in the east, we have declared war on nonnative brook trout in native cutthroat water out west. Would eastern states ever put a 20-fish daily limit on nonnative brown trout as Montana has on nonnative brook trout?
Below is a screen scrape from the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources brook trout page. Note the brown trout on the left. What makes this even tougher to understand is that brook trout are their state fish. After two years of lobbying to get the brown trout picture removed, WV NFC was finally able to get it changed..
And here is the cover of a non sporting publication in New Hampshire. Note the nonnative brown trout labeled as a “brook trout” in an article about state symbols. No other state symbol was misidentified. NFC Executive Bob Mallard wrote an OpEd explaining what was what and why it matters…
When it comes to trout, we have never really gotten it right. Nowhere else are we as accepting of nonnatives and stocking than we are in regard to trout. And the problem runs deep, involving the media, fishing industry, fish advocacy, and agencies responsible for managing our trout resources. This is why Native Fish Coalition is so important…