Coregonines were once among the most diverse and ecologically, economically, and culturally important groups of fishes in the Great Lakes (Koelz 1929; Smith 1968; Eshenroder et al. 2016; Duncan 2020). Coregonines declined dramatically throughout the Great Lakes in...
Post Archive:
2022
Hatchery production and research to support restoration of sustainable coregonine populations in Lake Ontario
This project focuses on the production of Coregonines at the USFWS-ANFH and NEFC hatcheries, working in partnership with USGSTLAS, NYSDEC, OMNRF, and USFS-LOBS to further progress towards fish community goals outlined by the GLFC Lake Ontario Committee (LOC) through contributing to Coregonine reintroduction and restoration. Production requests originate from the LOC and the NYSDEC. Fish health monitoring is a required component of the production program to transfer fish, maintain optimal fish health in culture facilities, and facilitate the restoration of both the natural forage base and the predatory Lake Trout populations in the Great Lakes. Production of bloater (Coregonus hoyi) in FY22 is part of a multi-year restoration effort for Lake Ontario.
How have changes to coregonine spawning habitat influenced reproductive success?
Lake Ontario’s Cisco, Coregonus artedi, and Lake Whitefish, Coregonus clupeaformis populations have declined for centuries and surveys suggest populations are impeded during early life stages. This project developed methods to quantify habitat specific coregonine egg...
Enhancing Kiyi (Coregonus kiyi) research to support the conservation and restoration of deep-water coregonine diversity in the Laurentian Great Lakes
The deep-water coregonines of the Coregonus species complex (including C. hoyi, C. kiyi, C. nigripinnis, C. zenithicus, C. johannae, and C. reighardi) in the Laurentian Great Lakes were among the fishes most impacted by overfishing, invasive species, and habitat...
Implementation and testing of hatchery enhancements at Allegheny National Fish Hatchery to increase production and improve health and quality of juvenile bloater raised for restoration stocking in Lake Ontario
The proposed project will install 16 15-foot circular fiberglass tanks to replace 10 45-year-old concrete raceways (scalable down to 8 tank option). The project will also assess a side-by-side production level comparison of fish health, water use, fish growth,...
Use of multi-gear sampling to improve abundance estimates of demersal Coregonines in the Great Lakes
Acoustic and mid-water trawl surveys have been used to estimate abundance and biomass of Great Lakes coregonines for decades. Acoustic sampling has potential to be an important tool in the assessment of future coregonine restoration efforts because new populations...
Supporting evaluation components of the Lake Huron Technical Committee’s Cisco reintroduction study: a multi-agency effort to promote Cisco recovery in the western main basin of Lake Huron (FY22)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service conducted larval coregonine surveys in 2022 aimed at documenting the current distribution, composition, and density of the larval coregonid community in Saginaw Bay. Sampling of the ichthyoplankton community was limited to pelagic...
Examining the potential for unrepresentative sampling during cisco Coregonus artedi gamete collections for the Saginaw Bay restoration effort
Great Lakes cisco populations declined during the 19th and 20th centuries due to factors such as overfishing, habitat degradation, and interactions with invasive species (Van Oosten 1930; Crowder 1980; Myers et al. 2009; George 2019). Cisco are now considered...
Morphological and genomic assessment of putative hybridization among deepwater ciscoes and between deepwater ciscoes and typical artedi in Lakes Michigan and Huron
Species diversity can be lost through a combination of demographic decline and hybridization (Mallet 2005; Seehausen 2006). Regarding diversity losses among Ciscoes (subgenus Leucichthys, genus Coregonus) across the Great Lakes, the demographic decline in the 20th...
Integrating historical records to compare historical and contemporary coregonine habitat use in the great lakes
Understanding and comparing historic and contemporary habitat use and distributions of coregonines (Gap Analysis, Box 2) has been deemed essential to inform all boxes of the Great Lakes coregonine restoration framework; there are dependencies between planning boxes...
Resolving taxonomy of the cisco (Coregonus) species complex in the Laurentian Great Lakes and Lake Nipigon
The manager endorsed Coregonine Restoration Framework (CRF) identified a need for reviewing and updating the taxonomy of ciscoes, and this task was assigned to the first of four science teams established in the Planning Phase of the CRF. The ‘Resolve cisco taxonomy’...