The 43.6 pound Rainbow Trout recently caught at Lake Diefenbaker has been submitted for world record status… Except, it’s clear the enormous trout is one of the half-million triploids who escaped a commercial fish farming operation and took up residence at the lake.
Conservation writer Ted Williams sums up the questionable background of the fish:
I learned further that an aquaculture operation called CanGro on Lake Diefenbaker produces over 100 Tons tons of finished commercial fish products annually. The operation is vertically integrated from hatching to processing. Fish are raised inside from egg to feeding size, then moved to net cages in the lake. The fish raised are steelheadXrainbow crosses and triploid females. Apparently the record fish was one of triploid females that recently escaped from CanGro net pens.
In other words, the “pending” world record (IGFA) was raised in a pen, genetically manipulated to grow huge, and regularly fed. Not exactly in line with the “spirit” of the rules, and it raises some pretty interesting questions — which I expect you to answer.
Can anything raised (and fed) in a pen be a “real” world record? The floor is yours…
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