Fishing Facts and History

Humans see their world through trichromatic vision - visual input is represented by the colors Red, Green, and Blue, and their millions of combinations. For centuries scientists thought that most of the animal world shared a similar ocular capability - either within man's visible color spectrum or in Black and White. With H. Mueller's proof in 1854 that photoreception occurs in the rods and cones of the eye, steps toward a scientific understanding of human and animal vision began. However, it was not until 1959 that physiological research confirmed that the human retina contains three types of cones, each most responsive to a different wavelength of light, with some overlapping response curves.[1] More recently, it was discovered that mature rainbow trout have a fourth cone - for Ultraviolet - providing a vision capability that had been previously detected in smolts but presumed lost as the fish matured.[2]

Baetid

Baetid with pseudo-color for UVA

Ultraviolet light, the non-visible wavelengths below 400 nm, was discovered by Ritter in 1801, but little recognition was given to it in terms of its effect on animal behavior until 1980 (though some research was done on minnows as early as 1924).