Eight minutes ago photons fired on that giant orange orb we circle. The light from the midday sun strikes the black-spotted silvery-white flanks of a Lahontan cutthroat trout. The wet gleam calls attention to the lines that zigzag on the side of the fish, like a stretched out letter Z, a herring bone pattern. Myomeres zoologists call them, little segments of flesh that really show on this muscular fish as it wriggles and writhes in the hands of Jay Bigelow, wanting to escape the unnatural grip of his hands. Bigelow holds a male trout, about three years old and 16 inches long; it’s part of a brood stock he’s developing. He
supervises operations at the Lahontan National Fish Hatchery in Gardernville, Nevada, on the banks of the Carson River. The hatchery is part of a larger integrated fisheries complex all working with the trout that includes the Nevada Fishery Resources Office and Marble Bluff Fish Passage Facility.
It’s through its skin, past the myomeres, and deep into its genetic makeup where the excitement lies in conserving this cutthroat trout. Bigelow clutches an outward articulation of a million wobbly trips around the sun, and a fortuitous find from the late 1970s.
The Lahontan cutthroat trout evolved in the ancient Lake Lahontan where at its maximum size inundated about 8,600 square miles of northwestern Nevada and parts of surrounding states. It’s one of 13 described subspecies of cutthroat trout in the American West. Fossils of this fish swim in stone in the lake basin bottom. As glaciers retreated north in the last ice age, an attendant climate change dried the basin. The ancient lake retreated to a few isolated lakes, leaving playas and friable Great Basin dirt. But with slow and gradual climate
change, the Lahontan cutthroat trout developed into a fish able to withstand environmental extremes that today readily kill other fish species. With the retreating waters, two forms of the trout arose: one accustomed to life in flowing waters, from tiny headwater streams to larger rivers that banded the margins of the ancient Lake Lahontan basin; the other, a lake-dweller.
Pyramid and Walker lakes at the bottom of the present-day basin held native Lahontan cutthroat trout. These lakes probably fluctuated highly in the last epoch, with the ebb and flow of drought and wet seasons. And they are terminal lakes, meaning water leaving them only does so by evaporation; no waters flow out of them, and that means mineral content is high – extremely high – and Lahontan cutthroat trout not only tolerate it, they evolved to thrive in it. These lake-form fish had other remarkable adaptations to life in flat water. The number of cartilaginous filaments inside their throat called gill rakers are
exceedingly high for any trout in the American West, indicating a habit of feeding on microscopic animals in lakes. Another adaptation speaks to diet; this lake-form fish also has a digestive track for preying on fish. For eons it stood on top of the food chain in the relict lakes wreaking havoc on its smaller neighboring cui-ui sucker, tui chub, and most likely cannibalizing its own. Lahontan cutthroat trout grew to phenomenal size. Explorer John Freemont was the first writer of English to document the fish in 1844. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian tribe gave his expedition fish up to four feet long for food. The largest known specimen tipped the scale at 62 pounds in 1916.
Talk of fish this large is largely an endeavor in history. What took the slow grind of time to create was undone by the cursive strokes of a fountain pen in 1905. The very first water development project by the Bureau of Reclamation, called the Newlands Project, altered water availability and flow to Lahontan cutthroat trout. Pyramid and Walker lakes dropped to irrigate those friable fields. Access from Pyramid Lake to spawning gravels in the Truckee River that feeds it was no more to be had. All cutthroat trout are obligated to spawn in flowing water; by simple attrition for lack of spawning habitat, Pyramid Lake was devoid of the leviathan cutthroat trout by 1939. The fish that carried
in its genes the stamp of time and the capability for tremendous growth in the face of harsh waters was extinct.
Or so it was thought.
Fast forward a few years to the 1970s. In the intervening years the Lahontan cutthroat trout came to reside on the list of species threatened with extinction, and it came to reside outside its native range. A transfer of trout from Pyramid Lake into a small fishless stream, Morrison Creek, on Pilot Peak in Utah proved priceless in moving forward in recovering this imperiled trout. When and by whom the transfer was made, no one knows. Bryce Nelson of the Utah Department of Natural Resources subsequently transferred some Morrison Creek fish to nearby fishless Bettridge Creek on BLM lands as a precaution against
extinction. Genetics studies commissioned by Lisa Heki, leader of the integrated fishery complex, and conducted by Dr. Mary Peacock at the
University of Nevada-Reno reveal that the fish that continue to reside on this Utah mountainside are in fact pure representatives of the original lake-dwelling form of Lahontan cutthroat trout.
And they have since come to reside elsewhere: Lahontan National Fish Hatchery.
The fish that Bigelow wrangled from a tank is a Pilot Peak fish, or more accurately stated, a Pyramid Lake fish. Through Heki’s 12 years of past experience working to recover this trout, and a vision for the future, the Lahontan National Fish Hatchery has moved away from a facility concentrating on a short-term non-native put-and-take sport fishery to one centered on the conservation of a native threatened species – yet with incredible, and really even greater sport fishing qualities.
“Yes, it can be done, and quicker than people believe,” said Heki. “Twenty years down the road, we could have 20- to 30-pound cutthroat trout running the river right through Reno.”
Building brood stocks from wild fish takes time. Methodically, Bigelow and crew steward the brood stock not for a maximum and sustained yield but exercising careful management to maintain a robust stock in keeping genetic integrity. Lahontan cutthroat trout are the only fish on station here. Families are kept separate; the family founders are kept separate; the young are frequently graded and separated to keep bigger fish from smaller fish, and the need to do so speaks to that inborn innate sense for piscivory of the lake-form fish. Even at the earliest ages they tend to want to eat fish flesh. To keep the wild in
the fish, fertilized eggs from trout captured in Morrison Creek are brought to the hatchery, infused into the brood stock. The hatchery complex has a willing and able partner in a conservation-minded citizen, Mr. Steve Doudy, who owns the land that Morrison Creek courses over.
The hatchery’s involvement in recovery came on strong in 2001 with success in hatching. In 2004, 13,197 fish were put back into Pyramid Lake where they are expected to grow exceedingly fast and contribute significantly to the recreational fishery managed by the Paiute Indian tribe.
The hatchery continues to meet rigorous demands for fish health given some of the fish will be stocked in California’s Fallen Leaf Lake and perhaps in Lake Tahoe; interstate transfer of fish has sometimes rigorous demands. The fish culture expertise will also be put to use this year when eggs will be incubated at the Marble Bluff Fish Passage Facility. The eggs will be incubated in Truckee River water so as to imprint the young fish on the river water. The intent is to get the as adults to swim back into the Truckee to spawn several years from now.
It will be a few years down the road that success could be measured.
In Bigelow’s hands is the future of Lahontan cutthroat trout. He puts the fish back in a tank and with a flit of the tail it dashes away faster than its shadow can keep up.By: Craig Springer / U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
