The lake whitefish (''Coregonus clupeaformis'') is a species of

freshwater whitefish The freshwater whitefish are fishes of the subfamily Coregoninae, which contains whitefishes (both freshwater and anadromous) and ciscoes, and is one of three subfamilies in the salmon family Salmonidae. Apart from the subfamily Coregoninae, ...

from North America. Lake whitefish are found throughout much of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

and parts of the northern

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, including all of the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five la ...

. The lake whitefish is sometimes referred to as a "humpback" fish due to the small size of the head in relation to the length of the body.Roland Sigurdson (2011
Lake whitefish
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Species Profile. 19 April. 2012 It is a valuable commercial fish, and also occasionally taken by sport fishermen. Smoked, refrigerated, vacuum-packed lake whitefish fillets are available in North American grocery stores. Other vernacular names used for this fish include ''Otsego bass'', ''Sault whitefish'', ''gizzard fish'', ''common whitefish, eastern whitefish, Great Lakes whitefish, humpback whitefish, inland whitefish'' and ''whitefish''.

Etymology

The scientific genus name ''Coregonus'' (co-regg'-on-us) means "angle eye" in Greek and the species name ''clupeaformis'' means "

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocea ...

-shaped" in Latin.

Description

Lake whitefish are similar in appearance to other whitefishes in the Coregoninae subfamily of the salmon family

Salmonidae Salmonidae is a family of ray-finned fish that constitutes the only currently extant family in the order Salmoniformes . It includes salmon (both Atlantic and Pacific species), trout (both ocean-going and landlocked), chars, freshwater whitefish ...

, such as the

northern cisco ''Coregonus artedi'', commonly known as the cisco, is a North American species of freshwater whitefish in the family Salmonidae. The number of species and definition of species limits in North American ciscoes is a matter of debate. Accordingl ...

(''Coregonus artedi''). As with all salmonids, they have an

adipose fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as s ...

.Lake Whitefish Identification.
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. 19 April 2012 To the distinction from

cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

, the lake whitefish has a snout which overhangs the short lower jaw, so that the mouth opens in a slightly inferior position. Thus the fish can feed on the bottom of lake beds or grab food particulates out of the water or from the surface of a water body. The cisco in turn has a short snout with a lower jaw that extends beyond the snout. Both the cisco and lake whitefish are discernible from the

mooneye Hiodontidae, commonly called mooneyes, is a family of ray-finned fish with a single included genus ''Hiodon''. The genus comprise two living species native to North America and three to five extinct species recorded from Paleocene to Eocene age ...

due to the small posterior dorsal

.Lake Whitefish ''Coregonus clupeaformis ''
Michigan Department of Natural Resources. 19 April. 2012. Another notable feature of the lake whitefish is the presence of two small flaps in each nostril. Their coloration is typically silver to white with an olive to pale-green or brown dorsal hues. The ventral fins are white and the tail has a dark posterior edge. The tail fin of the lake whitefish is severely forked, making it a fast swimmer. Lake whitefish from inland lakes can reach a weight upwards of ; the largest Lake Whitefish caught on rod and reel weighted 15 pounds 6 oz, from Clear Lake Ontario Canada on May 21, 1983 by Chris T. D. Webster according to the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, in Hayward Wisconsin. On average, the lake whitefish weighs only 4 pounds. They can grow to and commonly reach .

Life history

Habitat

Lake whitefish are cool water fish. They are found in a large number of inland lakes, and they have been known to enter brackish waters. The lake whitefish is distributed from

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S ...

and western Canada to the Atlantic coastal drainage of

Maine Maine () is a U.S. state, state in the New England and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and territories of Canad ...

and in

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen Provinces and territories of Canada, provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic Canad ...

north to

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

Reproduction

Lake whitefish spawn from September through January in water two to four metres in depth during the night. In the autumn, mature lake whitefish enter the shallows to lay their eggs on shoals of rubble and gravel. There is no parental care of the young. In the following spring the young will hatch. In northwestern Canada, a large spawning migration enters the Athabasca Delta in late summer, moving upstream in the

Athabasca River The Athabasca River (French: ''Rivière Athabasca'') is a river in Alberta, Canada, which originates at the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park and flows more than before emptying into Lake Athabasca. Much of the land along its banks is p ...

. The longest single movement of a tagged whitefish ever recorded was , from

Fort McMurray Fort McMurray ( ) is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significa ...

to the north shore of

Lake Athabasca Lake Athabasca (; French: ''lac Athabasca''; from Woods Cree: , " herethere are plants one after another") is located in the north-west corner of Saskatchewan and the north-east corner of Alberta between 58° and 60° N in Canada. The lake ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada.

Diet

Fish of

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. Th ...

l and postlarval stages feed on plankton. Once the larvae reach they switch to feeding on bottom-dwelling animals (

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class G ...

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

larvae,

zebra mussels The zebra mussel (''Dreissena polymorpha'') is a small freshwater mussel. The species originates from the lakes of southern Russia and Ukraine, but has been accidentally introduced to numerous other areas and has become an invasive species in ma ...

, and

fingernail clam Sphaeriidae is a family of small to minute freshwater bivalve molluscs in the order Sphaeriida. In the US, they are commonly known as pea clams or fingernail clams. Heard, William H. 1977. Reproduction of fingernail clams (Sphaeriidae: ''Sphaer ...

s) which they will consume for the remainder of their lives. In late June and July, some inland lake populations of ciscoes and lake whitefish leave the deep, cool waters to feast on emerging

mayflies Mayflies (also known as shadflies or fishflies in Canada and the upper Midwestern United States, as Canadian soldiers in the American Great Lakes region, and as up-winged flies in the United Kingdom) are aquatic insects belonging to the order ...

and

midges A midge is any small fly, including species in several families of non-mosquito Nematoceran Diptera. Midges are found (seasonally or otherwise) on practically every land area outside permanently arid deserts and the frigid zones. Some midge ...

. The lake whitefish's natural predators include

burbot The burbot (''Lota lota'') is the only gadiformes, gadiform (cod-like) freshwater fish. It is also known as bubbot, mariah, loche, cusk, freshwater cod, freshwater ling, freshwater cusk, the lawyer, coney-fish, lingcod, and eelpout. The species ...

lake trout The lake trout (''Salvelinus namaycush'') is a freshwater char living mainly in lakes in northern North America. Other names for it include mackinaw, namaycush, lake char (or charr), touladi, togue, and grey trout. In Lake Superior, it can als ...

, and

northern pike The northern pike (''Esox lucius'') is a species of carnivorous fish of the genus ''Esox'' (the pikes). They are typical of brackish water, brackish and fresh waters of the Northern Hemisphere (''i.e.'' holarctic in distribution). They are kno ...

Fishing

Commercial fishing

Lake whitefish is one of the most important species for commercial inland fisheries in North America. The total annual catch in 1999 from Canada was 8 328 t and USA 5 353 t reported by the

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

. Lake whitefish is the prime commercial species of the upper Great Lakes fishery, because this delicately flavored fresh fish has high local consumer acceptance. An average of 11 million pounds was harvested from the Great Lakes annually from 1981-1999. Although the harvest has declined from 9.5 to 8 million pounds in recent years, prices have not increased. Instead, the price for Great Lakes lake whitefish, which once reached as high as $1.04/lb., currently averages $.75/lb. and has dropped to as low as $.40/lb during periods of high production.

Sports fishing

Many amateur anglers also enjoy hooking this fish in the months of June, July and early August. A simple line and jig system is enough to catch the fish as they feast on mayflies and midges. In winter months, catching whitefish through the ice is very popular, particularly in northern Wisconsin, with many fishing guides specializing in this species. Successful icefishing techniques include using a jigging spoon, with at least one "slider hook" above and separated from the spoon with a barrel swivel, and all hooks tipped with wax worms.

Commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for commercial profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice it as an industry must oft ...

has allowed for the spread of this fish into many different markets, restaurants, and grocery store shelves.

Conservation

A major threat to the lake whitefish is an invasive parasite species, the

sea lamprey The sea lamprey (''Petromyzon marinus'') is a parasitic lamprey native to the Northern Hemisphere. It is sometimes referred to as the "vampire fish". Description The sea lamprey has an eel-like body without paired fins. Its mouth is jawless, ...

. It is one of a number of species (in addition to the

and

lake herring ''Coregonus artedi'', commonly known as the cisco, is a North American species of freshwater whitefish in the family Salmonidae. The number of species and definition of species limits in North American ciscoes is a matter of debate. Accordin ...

) aggressively attacked by sea lamprey. In Lake Michigan the sea lamprey began to decimate indigenous fish populations in the 1930s and 1940s. It may have entered the

Great Lakes region The Great Lakes region of North America is a binational Canada, Canadian–United States, American region that includes portions of the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York (state), New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania ...

through the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly redu ...

which opened in 1825.Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Factsheet: Petromyzon marinus
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Program (NAS). Retrieved on 2007-08-04. and spread even further in 1919 with improvements to the

Welland Canal The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Ontario, Canada, connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. It forms a key section of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway. Traversing the Niagara Peninsula from Port Weller, Ontario, Port Weller i ...

from Lake Ontario to

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that ...

Lake Huron Lake Huron ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Hydrologically, it comprises the easterly portion of Lake Michigan–Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Michigan, to which it is connected by the , Straits of Ma ...

, and

Lake Superior Lake Superior in central North America is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world's surface fresh w ...

Evolution

Since the end of the last glaciation (about 12,000 years ago), whitefish have re-colonized many North American lakes, from different directions, from refugia that represent genetically diverged stocks or races. After the invasions, the whitefish have also diversified into different populations locally, such that now in many lakes two main

ecotype In evolutionary ecology, an ecotype,Greek: ''οίκος'' = home and ''τύπος'' = type, coined by Göte Turesson in 1922 sometimes called ecospecies, describes a genetically distinct geographic variety, population, or race within a specie ...

s are recognized within the species: a ''normal'' and a ''dwarf'' ecotype. These ''normal'' and ''dwarf'' ecotypes are mainly differentiated by the

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

and

pelagic The pelagic zone consists of the water column of the open ocean, and can be further divided into regions by depth (as illustrated on the right). The word ''pelagic'' is derived . The pelagic zone can be thought of as an imaginary cylinder or w ...

zone they occupy, respectively. Normal whitefish also grow much bigger and live much longer than the dwarf ecotype. Many of these populations live in

sympatry In biology, two related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter one another. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct species s ...

, yet are reproductively isolated. The fact that they are young species makes them prime candidate to study the evolutionary forces driving their ecological divergence and reproductive isolation.

References

External links

*
Lake Whitefish (''Coregonus clupeaformis'')
Government of Alberta, Sustainable Resources Department. {{Taxonbar, from=Q110577

Lake whitefish The lake whitefish (''Coregonus clupeaformis'') is a species of freshwater whitefish from North America. Lake whitefish are found throughout much of Canada and parts of the northern United States, including all of the Great Lakes. The lake whit ...

Freshwater fish of the Arctic Freshwater fish of North America Freshwater fish of the United States Fish of the Eastern United States Fish of the Western United States Fish of the Great Lakes