Franken-Fish Sparks Ethics Debate

Wired reports: In an age of biotechnological juicing, not even the easygoing pastime of fishing is free from controversies over artificial enhancement.

On September 5, Saskatchewan fisherman Sean Konrad caught a 48-pound world-record rainbow trout. The fish came from Lake Diefenbaker, where trout genetically engineered to grow extra big escaped from a fish farm nine years ago.

The previous world record was held by Sean’s twin brother Adam, who pulled a 43-pound 10-ounce rainbow trout from Lake Diefenbaker in 2007. That catch sparked online debate over the legitimacy of Lake Diefenbaker’s farm-born, genetically engineered rainbows. Technically known as triploids, they’re designed with three sets of chromosomes, making them sterile and channeling energies normally spent reproducing towards growth.

In 2007, on a message board of the International Game Fish Association, the angling world’s record- and ethics-keeping body, some fishermen argued that triploids were unnatural, as divorced from the sport’s history as Barry Bonds’ home runs were from Hank Aaron’s.

The IGFA refused to make a distinction between natural and GM fish. Neither would they distinguish between species caught in their traditional waters and those introduced into new, growth-friendly environments, such as largemouth bass whose extra-large ancestors were imported from Florida to California in the 1960s.

But to purists, there was a difference between transplantation and outright manufacture.

The Konrad brothers’ response on the message board was curt: “Stop crying and start fishing.”

Now they’ve caught another record-breaking trout. Or have they?