Building a Better Trout: Engineering Whirling Disease Resistant Rainbows
By Tom Chandler on Apr 10, 2007 in News
While California’s Rainbows have largely escaped the sting of Whirling Disease, Rainbow trout populations in the Rocky Mountain West crashed in the 1990s, and in many cases haven’t recovered.
Researchers are creating rainbow trout less susceptible to whirling disease
Now, researchers are looking into cross-breeding a super trout – one that’s resistant to whirling disease:
All the while, researchers looked for answers, with the goal of someday re-establishing rainbow trout in Colorado. In recent years, some of the most promising research has focused on breeding Colorado River rainbows with another strain, called Hofer rainbows, from a hatchery in southern Germany. The Hofer trout, it turns out, are highly resistant to whirling disease.
It will be interesting to see if they develop the whirling-resistant trout. And — having done that — how prevalent stocking programs might be in the face of native cutthroat recovery programs.
See you at the lab, Tom Chandler.
Technorati Tags: rainbow trout, whirling disease
Alan Gregory | Apr 10, 2007 | Reply
This is scary stuff. Another bit of rationale for stocking over wild fish? Please no!
smellslikefish | Apr 10, 2007 | Reply
Yeah that is scary. I wonder this: with all the advancements in dna research and technology, you’d think it would be more efficient and effective to somehow mutate the whirling-disease-causing parasite so that its next generation is incapable of entering fish and instead eventually goes extinct…
Tom Chandler | Apr 10, 2007 | Reply
Yes, the danger exists that they’ll create a whirling-resistant trout (at least it’s cross-breeding and not genetic manipulation) and stock it everywhere it can swim because “it’s safe” to do so.
Given Colorado’s history of Whirling-disease infected hatcheries, could they be less concerned with fish in the wild or the fish they raise prior to stocking?
kbarton10 | Apr 11, 2007 | Reply
Fish and Game always wants to go high tech when lo-tech will work fine.
Whirling Disease makes the affected fish spin in the direction of the Earth’s axis, as we all learned in High School, too much alcohol makes the imbiber spin opposite the rotation of the Earth.
The solution is simple. Once an outbreak of Whirling Disease is known, just empty a couple of cases of single malt scotch in the stream - the rotations will cancel, and the trout’s equilibrium will be restored.
Anglers that fish cane drink carrot juice, so there will likely be little protest to the ruination of a fine aged Scotch.