The Sunapee trout; also called blueback trout, Sunapee Golden trout, or Quebec red trout; (Salvelinus alpinus oquassa) is a putative subspecies of Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) native to the northeast United States, Québec, and New Brunswick. Originally described as three separate species--S. oquassa, the blueback trout of Lake Oquassa in Maine (1854), S. aureolus the golden trout of Sunapee lake in New Hampshire (1888) and S. marstoni the Quebec red trout (1893). The Sunapee trout is often a foot long and is said to actually be silver in color. It is a distinct strain of Arctic char, having become trapped by changed drainage systems and climates in numerous lakes and ponds in New England and southeastern Québec. The lake for which this subspecies is most noted for is Sunapee Lake in New Hampshire. In the wake of the retreating glacial front approximately 8,000 years ago, following the end of the last ice age, the Arctic char, an extremely coldwater, anadromous fish, was still spawning in New England. After the climate changed sufficiently, anadromous Arctic char stopped spawning in New England, leaving several lacustrine populations of Arctic char cut off from the bulk of the species in deep, cold, clear lakes in New Hampshire, Maine, and Québec. The lake populations of Arctic char in Maine are termed "blueback trout," those in Québec are termed "Québec red trout," and the populations that used to exist in Vermont and New Hampshire along with the current population in Floods Pond, Maine, are termed Sunapee golden trout. By the late 19th century, as the New Hampshire and Vermont lakes developed its own steady summer tourism, recreational fishermen who sought to increase their catches began to introduce new fish species into these lakes, and these eventually overwhelmed the native Sunapee golden trout. Lake trout, a larger char that holds the same ecological niche as Sunapee trout, only better, out-competed the Sunapee golden trout and hybridized with it, further accelerating its decline. The world record Sunapee golden trout was most likely a hybrid between the two species. Soon after that record-setting catch, the Sunapee golden trout could no longer be found in its resident lakes. The Sunapee Lake strain of the Sunapee trout was rediscovered in 1977 when Kent Ball, of Idaho Fish and Game, discovered a char species living with brook trout in a mountain lake in Idaho. Analysis by Robert Benhke, Eric Wagner, and Steve