The humble whitefish, beloved of tourists at summer fish boils and the subject of dedicated pursuit by ice fishermen in Chequamegon Bay and elsewhere on Lake Superior, is also a fish along with its relatives the cisco and deepwater chubs that are of great economic importance.
Within the Great Lakes, they constitute nearly 36 percent of the total commercial fish harvest by weight, and according to fisheries experts, the processed value of this catch likely exceeds $100 million annually.
Known by their scientific family name as Coregonids, whitefish, cisco and deepwater chubs are found throughout the northern regions of the world. From The Canadian Arctic to the endless lakes and coasts of Russia, From Lake Baikal to Lake Superior, indigenous peoples, commercial fishermen, sports anglers and generally just plain lovers of fish throughout the region revere them.
Whitefish boils and fried whitefish, planked whitefish and baked whitefish are always welcome on the menu. Smoked chubs and cisco are a staple for Green Bay Packers football games on TV. But their importance is also a spiritual one for many Native Americans in the United States and Canadian First Nations peoples who rely on them as part of their subsistence. That is also true for indigenous peoples from Asia to Europe.
The importance of this earth-circling family of fish led to the first International Coregonid Symposium to be held at the University of Manitoba in 1969. That first gathering was an effort for fisheries professionals to have an open and encouraging forum on Coregonids. It was so successful that it inspired a second symposium some years later. Eventually these meetings led to a regular series of forums held at three-year intervals, most recently at Irkutsk on Lake Baikal in 2014.
For 2017, in recognition of the importance of Coregonids to the Great Lakes ecology, the 13th International Coregonid Symposium is taking place from Monday until Friday at the Bayfield Pavilion. The event is being sponsored by a number of organizations, including Sea Grant, Minnesota, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Great Lakes Fisheries Trust.
Over 100 fisheries professionals from 12 countries were on hand to hear presentations from local tribal and governmental speakers as well as scientific presentations about research taking place in the field.
According to Tom Pratt, a research scientist with the Canadian government and one of the organizers of the symposium, there are representatives from virtually all of the northern nations where Coregonids are found.
There are people here from Russia, Latvia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada and the U.S. people from all over the world who use these fish as a food resource, he said. There are fishermen here, there are researchers here, lots of government management people.
Pratt agreed that Coregonids aren’t as much of a draw for sports anglers as trout and walleye, but from a commercial perspective and in terms of their distribution and the need to protect their future, their management is of vital concern for people around the world.
We are seeing talks on the status of some of these fish, many of them are unfortunately endangered or disappearing, particularly here in the Great Lakes, he said.
Pratt said many of the talks concerned proper management and new techniques for analyzing how many fish actually exist and what safe harvest levels are.
It’s very important for people to be able to get together and share the science, he said.
Pratt discussed some of the key threats facing Coregonids.
Invasive species are certainly a wild card, he said. Some of the presentations have shown that invasives have actually helped them, and some have hurt them.
Among the invasives that have hurt are quagga mussels. Where quagga mussels have exploded, invertebrates that form major food sources for deepwater chubs and ciscos have undergone precipitous declines, to be followed by the fish that feed on them.
This pattern has become a major issue in Lakes Huron and Michigan, but because quagga mussels have not become overwhelming in Lake Superior, that issue has not yet cropped up on the big lake.
Climate change is another potential threat, Pratt said.
These are cool and coldwater fishes so as things get warmer, their available habitat in a lot of our lakes is shrinking, he said.
Runoff of nutrients into lakes holding Coregonids is another threat. The runoff can cause a bloom of algae and other plants, which then die and decompose, using much of the available oxygen in the water, which can result in die-offs in some lakes.
Such losses are a big deal for species that prey on young ciscos.
Cisco are a tremendous prey for fish like walleye and northern pike, Pratt said. Those lakes where you see really big northern pike and walleye, they are probably feeding on ciscos.
Pratt said the takeaway from the symposium is the concept that the issues surrounding the management and continued survival of Coregonids are common, not only to North America, but around the world.
It’s great to learn from others how to improve how we manage these fishes, and it’s critical to see how other parts of the world are dealing with the same issues we are, he said. We have to figure out how to manage our use of the landscape to keep these fish around. They are culturally important and they are important to our commercial fishermen in all parts of the world.
Pratt said he also hoped that by bringing the event to Bayfield, fisheries professionals from around the world would gain an understanding of how important whitefish and their relatives the deepwater chubs and ciscos have been to the Bayfield area.
We want to keep these fish sustained, he said. We want people to recognize why we need this fish, and to introduce them to parts of the world they would not have heard about. They can take away how beautiful it is here and how culturally important the whitefish, chubs and cisco are to the people of this area.
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