Steelhead ill-served by ‘edited’ science | Times Colonist

So steelhead are "oceangoing rainbow trout" again??

Sheesh, who knew?




Take care.
 
When I first caught Steelhead they were known as salmo gairdnerii as I recall. In fact, I have a custom built rod from 1988 that has that name on it, as it was designed for steelheading primarily.

Some time in the '90's they were re-classified to the oncorhynchus mykiss, the name used today, ostensibly making them a salmon species rather than a trout species.

That's what I meant by my comment.

A Rose by any other name........


Take care.
 
Salmo would have put them as a relative of the Atlantic Salmon family which also includes the Brown Trout (Salmo Trutta). Oncorhynchus makes them biologically related to the Pacific Salmon family which makes of course a lot more sense. Doesn't make it a salmon though just like a Brown trout is no salmon.
 
Salmo would have put them as a relative of the Atlantic Salmon family which also includes the Brown Trout (Salmo Trutta). Oncorhynchus makes them biologically related to the Pacific Salmon family which makes of course a lot more sense. Doesn't make it a salmon though just like a Brown trout is no salmon.
There physical and ecological traits make them far closer to a Salmo than an Oncorhynchus but politics see things differently.
 
Thank you AA for bringing up the on paper description of why steelhead are now called oncorhynchus. But it is just like comparing in where freshwater productivity has been fine on paper but a totally different story from the real world.

I'm sure we would all agree that steelhead cannot hybridize easily with any of the other pacific salmon. I wonder if Steelhead or Oncorhynchus mykiss could be easily bread with Salmo Gairdneri? I would assume yes and then they are called??? Maybe you can find studies stating otherwise.

Anyways they are just names and could just as easily be changed again in the future by some other group of smart people. Steelhead do live after spawning and utilize freshwater habitats more similarly to atlantic salmon than the pacific salmon.
 
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