New Publications – Ontario Chapter of the American Fisheries Society

Archive of Morphological Data for the Coregonus artedi Species Complex of the Great Lakes, Lake Nipigon, and Great Slave Lake

Robert — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 15:48:15 +0000

Archive of Morphological Data for the Coregonus artedi Species Complex of the Great Lakes, Lake Nipigon, and Great Slave Lake is a user guide for an archive of morphological data recorded by various authors from North American ciscoes of the Coregonus artedi species complex (subfamily Coregoninae). The archive is accessible from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s (GLFC) server, is open access, and contains data for the Laurentian Great Lakes; Lake Nipigon, Ontario; and Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories. The archive comprises morphometrics and meristics (together metrics) for 6,700 individual Cisco of which 1,400 are accompanied by images. In addition, the archive contains metrics presented as arrays by W. N. Koelz, Coregonid fishes of the Great Lakes, Bulletin of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries 43(2):297-643, which were based on 10,000 individuals. Spreadsheets in the Metrics folder of the archive are divided broadly into Contemporary and Historical subfolders and the Contemporary subfolder is further divided into Cisco Monograph and Extra Monograph subfolders to encourage statistical assessment of findings in GLFC Miscellaneous Publication 2023. The Images folder is organized into subfolders by lake. Tables in this user guide allow for quick determination of the availability of data by lake, subspecies, author, and year.

All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes

Robert — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 03:52:38 +0000

All Too Clear uses cutting-edge underwater drones to explore how quadrillions of tiny invasive mussels are re-engineering the ecosystem of North America’s Great Lakes at a scale not seen since the glaciers. The mussels are trapping nutrients, the building blocks of life, on the lake bottom. Without nutrients, organisms of all kinds – from the tiniest plankton to the largest fish – are vanishing, creating vast biological deserts. While the consequences for nature and people are severe, the loss of life has had an extraordinary side effect: it’s made the lakes far clearer than they’ve ever been before. We’ve harnessed this newfound clarity to capture animal behaviours and freshwater environments that have never been filmed before.

All 3 “All Too Clear” episodes are now streaming Canada-wide on TVO Today Docs.

Standard Methods for Sampling North American Freshwater Fishes, second edition

Robert — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 23:15:30 +0000

Standard Methods for Sampling North American Freshwater Fishes, second edition provides standard sampling methods recommended by the American Fisheries Society for assessing and monitoring freshwater fish populations in North America. Methods apply to ponds, reservoirs, natural lakes, and streams and rivers containing cold and warmwater fishes. Range-wide and eco-regional averages for indices of abundance, population structure, and condition for individual species are supplied to facilitate comparisons of standard data among populations. Provides information on converting nonstandard to standard data, statistical and database procedures for analyzing and storing standard data, and methods to prevent transfer of invasive species while sampling.

Scott A. Bonar, Norman Mercado-Silva, and Kevin L. Pope, editors

To purchase a copy visit the AFS Bookstore.

Let’s Go for a Swim! Aquatic Species at Risk in Ontario, Prairies and Arctic

Robert — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 22:49:40 +0000

Let’s Go for a Swim! Print and colour some aquatic species at risk in Ontario, Prairies and Arctic, including Grass Pickerel, Spotted Gar, Lake Sturgeon, Redside Dace, Bigmouth Buffalo, and more.

Aquatic Species at Risk Ontario, Prairies, and Arctic
The Ontario and Prairie Region of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) includes Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, while the Arctic Region includes the Yukon North Slope, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Hudson and James Bay. This boundary is inclusive of Inuit Nunangat. The purpose of Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) is to conserve, protect and recover Endangered or Threatened species, and to encourage the management of species of Special Concern to prevent them from becoming further at risk. The Act aims to prevent indigenous species from becoming extirpated or extinct and preserve biodiversity within Canada.

Not all aquatic species at risk in Canada are shown in this book. For more information, including critical habitat and distribution data for all aquatic species listed under SARA, check out DFO’s National Aquatic Species at Risk Map.

Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, 8th edition

Robert — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 19:41:11 +0000

Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, 8th edition (DOI: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874691) provides an up-to-date checklist of common and scientific names for all described and taxonomically valid fish species living in freshwaters and marine waters of North America. This eighth edition reflects taxonomic changes that have occurred since 2013 and is expanded geographically to include all species found within the exclusive economic zones of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It includes names for 5,089 species and 333 families, an increase from 3,875 species and 260 families in the seventh edition. It also provides the rationale and methodology for common name allocation and history of changes from the previous edition and includes English, French, and Spanish names. The publication was compiled in collaboration with the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

Lawrence M. Page, Katherine E. Bemis, Thomas E. Dowling, Héctor S. Espinosa-Pérez, Lloyd T. Findley, Carter R. Gilbert, Karsten E. Hartel, Robert N. Lea, Nicholas E. Mandrak, Margaret A. Neighbors, Juan J. Schmitter-Soto, and H. J. Walker, Jr.

To purchase a copy visit the AFS Bookstore.

A Monograph on Ciscoes of the Laurentian Great Lakes and Lake Nipigon (Revised)

Robert — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 15:23:21 +0000

The Great Lakes Fishery Commission publication of Ciscoes (Coregonus, subgenus Leucichthys) of the Great Lakes and Lake Nipigon (2016) was recently revised. The report was revised to provide corrected snout lengths for the 2015 collections of albus-like from Lakes Huron and Michigan, Appendix Tables 14 and 15. The revised report (July 2023) is available in PDF.

Ciscoes historically were the dominant consumers of zooplankton throughout the Great Lakes. Comprising eight main forms, this complex provided critical links in food webs between invertebrates and top predators like Lake Trout and Walleye. Ciscoes also supported wide-ranging commercial fisheries. One form of cisco inhabited upper waters and was predominant. The other seven forms all inhabited deep water and were marketed as chubs.

The new monograph represents an update of a study by Walter Koelz, published in 1929. He was the first to systematically describe the forms and document their life history. His field studies, conducted aboard commercial fishing boats, lasted from 1917 to 1924, and encompassed 14,000 specimens—a colossal undertaking. Many of his specimens are archived at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, where he once worked.

The diversity of ciscoes documented by Koelz did not persist long after the completion of his studies. In fact, the two largest forms in Lake Michigan were approaching extirpation even while he collected. The cause was intensive fishing with gillnets that selectively removed the largest forms, allowing the smaller forms to proliferate. This situation worsened when the sea lamprey invaded the Great Lakes and preferentially preyed on the largest forms, compounding the problem.

Freshwater Fisheries in Canada: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Resources and Their Management

Robert — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 17:10:52 +0000

Canada is surrounded by three oceans and home to more freshwater lakes and rivers than can be reasonably counted. It is therefore not surprising that Canada has a plethora of freshwater fisheries and a long history of use and innovative strategies for managing them.

Freshwater Fisheries in Canada: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Resources and Their Management (https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874707) is designed to follow a logical arc beginning with an overview of the Canadian landscape and the zoogeography and status of freshwater fish populations. Next, the book brings together reports on fisheries from across Canada—either at the provincial or regional scale (as dictated largely by ecoregion; e.g., the North, the Laurentian Great Lakes). Then, a number of issues and threats are presented that are useful in revealing the challenges and opportunities that exist for ensuring that freshwater fish populations are healthy and vibrant. We conclude with some reflective contributions, including short essays from some legendary fisheries professionals in Canada as well as a forward-looking piece by some early-career fisheries professionals. Taken together, this book will serve as a resource for those interested in learning about the past, present, and future of freshwater fishes and fisheries in Canada.

To purchase a copy visit the AFS Bookstore.

Pacific Salmon Field Guide

Robert — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 19:06:33 +0000

Pacific salmon are of immense cultural, ecological and economic importance to the west coast of North America. They are the most commonly seen fish on the western side of North America but identifying among the seven species is difficult for most of their life stages. Two salmon researchers have worked extensively in the field with this iconic group of fish and have developed the first comprehensive field identification guide for Pacific salmon in a functional format. This guide presents information and identifying characteristics for the seven Pacific salmon species—Sockeye, Coho, Chinook, Pink, Chum, Steelhead and Coastal Cutthroat—across five life stages, with strong emphasis on detailed and intuitive illustrations.

This guide is an identification resource that includes natural history, life stage descriptions and conservation status of Pacific salmon and how to observe these fish in the wild. The identification portions are organized into five life stages: fry, smolt, post smolt, ocean adult and spawner. The many scientific illustrations for each species are drawn from real specimens representative of their species and life stage. Joseph Tomelleri, who drew all the brilliant illustrations in this book, painstakingly measured every part of each fish, counting every fin ray and row of scales while layering colour upon colour. In addition, dozens of photos show these fish in incredible detail.

The Guide was published by Lone Pine Publishing on September 1st 2022 and is available from Canada Book Distributors Ltd.

Aquatic Ecosystem Classification for Ontario’s Rivers and Streams, Version 2

Robert — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 16:39:28 +0000

The Aquatic Ecosystem Classification (AEC) is a science-based tool used to classify Ontario’s rivers and streams based on their physical attributes (e.g., water temperature, turbidity, channel slope, upstream drainage area). The AEC reduces the complexity of these vast aquatic networks in Ontario by using consistent and quantitative methods to build a standardized data foundation that helps us understand and manage streams including landscape-scale planning and policy development. At the most basic level, we hope that people can derive expectations about the nature of a stream reach or segment without having to actually visit a stream.

The AEC has been in development for several years. Time was required to develop layers of information (e.g., water temperature predictions at the reach scale) that are needed to understand the variety of stream types in Ontario. This is not a simple or easy task given the estimated 500,000 km of streams across a land area of 1 million square kilometers. In the future we will provide additional layers of information such as climate change projections, human disturbance indices, flow regime type, and complete temperature predictions in the north. These are all helpful pieces of the puzzle towards understanding Ontario’s streams and rivers.

Many people have contributed to the development of the AEC especially Stephanie Melles, Isaac Sutton, Mike Parna, Sarah Parna, Kimisha Ghunowa, Paul Seelbach, Lizhu Wang, Dan McKenney and numerous students.

AEC and supplementary data can be found on GeoHub.

Jones, N.E. and B.J. Schmidt. 2022. Aquatic ecosystem classification for Ontario’s rivers and streams, version 2. Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry, Science and Research Branch, Peterborough, ON. Science and Research Technical Report TR-47. 30 p. + appendices

Annotated Checklist of Fishes of Thunder Bay District

Robert — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 21:09:39 +0000

This first edition of Checklist of Fishes of Thunder Bay District adds to existing checklists prepared by members of the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists (TBFN) covering other vertebrate taxa (mammals, birds, reptiles & amphibians), as well vascular plants, butterflies, and odonates. As with these other checklists, it covers the official judicial District of Thunder Bay which extends from the eastern border of Quetico Provincial Park east to White River, and from the international border north to Lake St. Joseph and the Albany River. Much of the District (60%) is within the Great Lakes watershed, with the remaining draining into the Arctic Ocean either north via the Hudson Bay Lowlands, or west via Rainy Lake/Lake of the Woods and the Nelson River watershed.

This checklist was prepared by Rob Foster (TBFN) with major inputs from Dr. Walter Momot and Connie Hartviksen (both Lakehead University [retired] and TBFN). It is based in large part on their decades-long work on the region’s ichthyofauna.