Dragon Lake Whitefish (Coregonus sp. 2)  

The Dragon Lake is a 2,25 km² resp. 225 ha large lake in British Columbia, it is a popular destination for anglers and well known for its large rainbow trouts (Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum)) – however, that wasn’t always so.  

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The lake was once the home for two sympatric whitefish species – both species have never been described, and both species fell victim to a so called ‘lake rehabilitation’ in the year 1956.  

The term ‘rehabilitaion’ disguises the pervert idea, to reshape a lake appropriate for so called game fishes by using insecticides like rotenone and toxaphene, both of which are simply deadly for fishes, to exterminate all living things, so that, later, when the poisons have vanished from the water of the now dead lake, the desired game fishes can be introduced – in the case of the Dragon Lake rainbow trouts.  

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The Dragon Lake Whitefish was similar to the Lake Whitefish (Coregonus clupaeformis (Mitchill)), but differed from this species in the number of its gill rakers.

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edited: 03.12.2012