Rainbow Trout: The “World Fish”

In Washington State Magazine, Eric Sorenson offers an excellent overview of how the rainbow trout became the world’s “most popular fish.”

“Other fish evolved for more specific niches, but the rainbow’s tolerance for warmer temperatures and poorer waters has helped it thrive. Indeed, if an animal’s prime directive is to proliferate, the rainbow’s success is up there with the planet’s hundreds of millions of dogs.”

(For more on the history and global dominance of rainbow trout, read Anders Halverson’s An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World.)