Even the fish are juiced

Fishing seems difficult enough without the potential of coming upon fish that have been genetically engineered. And now Wired has the story of how fisherman are caught in a debate over whether a record-setting catch of a genetically engineered fish should really count.

Earlier this month, Saskatchewan fisherman Sean Konrad snared a 48-pound, world-record rainbow trout in Lake Diefenbaker, which is apparently filled with oversized trout that escaped from a nearby fish farm nine years ago.

Although it sounds like a B-grade horror movie, the fish escape was benign. Mostly it resulted in a population of rainbows known as “triploids,” because they had been designed with three sets of chromosomes that render them sterile while directing additional energy towards growth. 

Despite outcries that the catch shouldn’t be logged in record books because it was farm-born and genetically altered, the International Game Fish Association has decided to make no distinction between natural and farm-raised fish.

If you don’t know that fishing is competitive, consider the lengths to which Sean Konrad and this twin brother Adam (the previous world-record holder for a rainbow trout catch) go to make sure that nobody else discovers where they got the biggest fish bite in this interview from ESPN and why his record-setting catch was done with a headlamp on:  

“If there are people out, we don’t even try to fish. We have so many locals trying to figure out what we’re doing, we pretty much limit it to nighttime now.”

I think the answer to whether a catch should count lies in one simple rule — would you eat it? If you wouldn’t be willing take a bite out of that genetically engineered trout or whatever species is next to come down the pike, then the record shouldn’t stand. At the very least, fishing might want to take a page from baseball and consider putting an asterisk next to the record.

[Image via Flickr: alex_lee2001]