ARS | Publication request: ONE FISH, TWO FISH, RED FISH AND THREE BLUE FISH

Submitted to: Colorado Aquaculture Association Newsletter
Publication Type: Trade Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: March 30, 2006
Publication Date: June 15, 2006
Citation: Silverstein, J. 2006. One fish, two fish, red fish and three blue fish. Colorado Aquaculture Association Newsletter 18(2):5-6.

Technical Abstract: There have been three types of "blue" trout described in the scientific literature, one from Japan, one from the US and one from France. The version described from Japan is apparently sterile. This is a "cobalt" blue colored rainbow trout with a pituitary defect first described in 1974 from a hatchery in Shiga prefecture. Another blue body color mutant was described as iridescent metallic blue (IMB) by Harold Kincaid in the United States in 1975. This variant had superior growth. A third blue rainbow trout was recently described by a French group who carefully characterized the genetics of this variant in 2006. The three types of blue fish described seem to be due to different causes. The Japanese variant is sterile and so if it is passed genetically it must be in a rare recessive allele. The IMB form described by Kincaid and the blue form recently described by Blanc et al. both appear to be heritable and passed as recessive alleles, however the type described from the US grew better, while the French one grew worse than wild type.