There are often stark differences in our understanding, hence management, of anadromous and migratory freshwater fishes. Many of these migrators are compelled to navigate among distinct rearing, feeding, and spawning habitats, yet now require artificial propagation to maintain populations in compromised waterbodies. Besides migratory behavior and population declines, these fishes share olfactory physiology—whether

The Coronavirus’ grip on the nation and the grim daily reminder of how this virus impacts us prompted me to question, what impact has this virus had on the training of students entering the field. Here, I review some facts concerning the pandemic, provide my experience with it so far, and offer a message of hope moving forward.

There’s scientific evidence that being near bodies of water promotes mental health and happiness. It’s not too surprising that that many Americans took solace in nature during the past year. For those really lucky ones, that took the form of relaxing and recharging in cool streams, sparkling rivers, clear lakes, and along shimmering coastlines.

Each summer, high school students gear up to get hands-on experience in the field of fisheries science through the Hutton Junior Fisheries Biology Program. This paid summer internship and mentoring program, Sponsored by AFS, seeks to engage, inspire, and diversify the next generation of fisheries professionals. For more than 20 years, the Hutton Program has worked to stimulate interest in careers in

Fisheries professionals frequently measure habitat type and amount, but less often measure the importance of where those habitats are located and in what combinations. We address this challenge by testing whether the individual and combined type, quantity, and location of habitat affects fish diversity in the upper Neosho River basin, Kansas, as a different approach to measuring habitat heterogeneity

Catchable-sized hatchery trout (hereafter, catchables) have become a staple component of many fisheries management programs throughout North America. Due to their size, catchables create immediate fisheries once they are stocked, and fisheries managers have gradually shifted towards stocking fewer, larger trout. However, the cost of growing larger fish may reduce the efficiencies of catchable stocking

The Fisheries Act (Act), a long-standing Act protecting fisheries in Canada, was changed in 2012 to redefine its central purpose to the management of fisheries in Canada. Along with this refocus were changes that appeared to reduce protections for habitat and all fish. After an outcry by scientists, Indigenous peoples, and environmental organizations, the Act was revised in 2019 to “restore lost protections”

Hydroelectricity provides 6% of U.S. electrical power needs, but hydro‐dams block migrations of both anadromous and catadromous fishes. Engineered fishways have been built to facilitate fish movements past dams, but many have performed poorly. Dam removal is an effective way of restoring dwindling migratory fish populations by allowing unrestricted pathways to their spawning areas and for the downstream

The inclusion of diverse individuals in ecological sciences has shown little progress over the past 2 decades for various reasons, including structural barriers in societies, organizations, and academia. Collaboration networks are important for productivity, promotion, and scientific impact, yet the extent to which the structure of these networks affects the inclusion of minoritized people remains

Discard mortality can make fishing unsustainable, even in catch‐and‐release or highly regulated fisheries. However, fishing practices and gears that minimize hook injury, handling, and air exposure can considerably improve fitness and survival in released fish. This study tested whether modified hooks could allow anglers to successfully land and then release fish in the water and without handling.

Although fisheries challenges evolve rapidly, historical approaches may provide “new” tools for managers. In the state of Washington, the Makah Tribe have used čibu·d, their traditional fishhook, to target Pacific Halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis long before the advent of modern fisheries. We describe our experience in rediscovering this historical harvesting method, testing the species selectivity

The Idaho Chapter AFS (ICAFS) held its 59th annual meeting virtually March 1–5. The organizing committee put in a huge amount of effort to learn virtual platforms, rehearse the details of moderating live sessions, and expand meeting access beyond ICAFS members. The meeting used the Cvent event services platform and the GiveSmart online fundraising application, in addition to other platforms for some

To AFS Leadership: We were inspired by President Murphy’s editorial, “What Would John Do?” In Fisheries (August 2020). We appreciate the end quote from the Dalai Lama “When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But when you listen, you may learn something new.” We provide in this letter, our perspectives regarding ways to listen, learn, and address racial and environmental justice

Emergent properties of ecosystems are community attributes, such as structure and function, that arise from connections and interactions (e.g., predator–prey, competition) among populations, species, or assemblages that, when viewed together, provide a holistic representation that is more than the sum of its individual parts. Climate change is altering emergent properties of aquatic ecosystems through

Graduate school is one of the most discussed topics in the Student Angle Column of Fisheries (Carlson et al. 2015a). A graduate degree has gradually become the norm for most fisheries professionals (Grossman 1998; Zale et al. 2000; Kaemingk et al. 2013). Previous Fisheries articles have noted that finding an exciting project, having compatibility with an advisor, and access to opportunities that expand

Better understanding of the degree of “passability” needed to sustain robust sub‐populations upstream of barriers could help address and perhaps eliminate perceived trade‐offs between fish passage and other resource management goals. We used spatially explicit, individual‐based modeling to explore the population‐level consequences of various levels of upstream passability by (1) adult resident trout

All of the fisheries people I know work incredibly hard. They entered this field because they have what is, in many cases, a lifelong interest in things aquatic. They display a passion for aquatic ecology and conservation that goes well beyond simply doing their job. Despite the many ways the COVID‐19 pandemic has made our jobs more difficult, I see evidence every day that this passion and commitment

As a society, we are confronted with the question of how best to feed an expanding human population, and some have pointed to seafood as a “climate-friendly” option. To date, the contributions of small-scale fisheries (SSFs) have been largely excluded from studies on food footprint. Here, we calculated the Emission Intensity profiles for seven seafood types generated by Mexican SSFs. Based on these

Run-of-river hydropower reduces streamflow between diversion and powerhouse, potentially impacting fish. Hydropower license conditions include instream flows to protect fish, but monitoring instream flow effectiveness to protect fish is rarely reported. Monitoring a trout population before construction (baseline) and during operation of a small hydropower project with instream flows for spawning and

The war on science, which has been so demoralizing in recent years, by all reason should be thwarted by the dramatic accomplishments of the SARS–Covid‐19 vaccine development. The rapidity of development, expedited testing, surprising effectiveness, and translation into manufacturing have been stunning. In the game of comparing recent accomplishments in science and technology—the Manhattan Project,

Ecosystem‐based fisheries management (EBFM) is an application of ecosystem‐based management in which abiotic, biotic, and socio‐economic interactions are considered when managing fisheries. The primary objectives of this study were: (1) to understand how state fishery scientists define EBFM; (2) to identify the perceived implementation of EBFM components within state agencies; and (3) to identify potential

Erratum for Fisheries Issue Information, Volume 45, Issue 12, Backpage: Blue Catfish Ictalurus furcatus, https://doi.org/10.1002/fsh.10552 The image in this Backpage was incorrectly identified as a Blue Catfish Ictalurus furcatus. The species is a darkly colored Channel Catfish Ictalurus punctatus. The image has been corrected in the online version. Erratum for Fisheries Issue Information, Volume 45

Canada’s Fisheries Act provides essential protection for fish and their habitat. To manage thousands of projects a year, Fisheries and Oceans Canada implements a risk-based framework requiring authorization and offsetting for the highest risk projects. Projects considered lower risk proceed via letters of advice. Following changes to the Act in 2012, there were concerns about transparency and cumulative

As a volunteer organization, AFS is its members. We have a small, dedicated staff that offers invaluable assistance in executing AFS programs, but it is the members’ ideas and actions that drive our community’s direction and progress. This column tells a story of how members are once again putting ideas into action on an issue of extreme importance for fisheries conservation.

Inland fisheries face increasing threats to their sustainability. Despite speculation that depensation may exacerbate the effects of stressors on population resiliency, depensation has not been empirically explored in freshwater fisheries. Declining productivity of Walleye Sander vitreus populations in northern Wisconsin foreshadows an underlying change in naturally reproduced juvenile Walleye survival

Graduate students, attending professional meetings is the best thing you can do to kickstart your career. Professional meetings are incredible opportunities to give presentations in front of an audience of both your peers and seasoned scientists. You need this experience to practice and gain confidence in your public speaking. It might surprise you to know that those authors whose papers you have been

Theodore Nicholas Gill’s misconception of Lorenz Okenfuss’s use of the Latvian vernacular name Sander for Cuvier’s French vernacular name Les Sandres, as a properly coined Latin name, led to Gill’s and subsequent authors’ incorrect acceptance of Sander as the senior synonym for Stizostedion. However, some authors, aware Sander is a common name and never proposed as a valid generic name, have continued

Humans have a long history of extracting seemingly abundant resources from marine ecosystems. According to Ocean Recovery, fisheries can continue to provide sustainable nourishment and support global economies far into the future. The Hilborn duo take on the complexities of the past, present, and future of marine resource management from the perspective of optimistic fisheries scientists working in

Writing and publishing fisheries book reviews serves as a useful teaching tool that can provide a variety of skills, including critical thinking, scientific writing, collaboration, and the publication process. Here, I describe the process my students and I have followed over the last 25 years in publishing 19 student-oriented book reviews, and highlight some of the lessons learned.

I feel confident that we need not worry about a New World Order cabal with black helicopters and a secret underground headquarters under the Denver airport, or that jet aircraft condensation trails are being used to spread secret chemical concoctions that control the weather, population growth, and even people’s minds.

Sustainably managing fisheries for ecological and social objectives in the current era of rapid environmental change requires that managers, scientists, and fishery stakeholders work together to find solutions to complex problems. Recognizing that multiple forms of knowledge generation exist and focusing on the strengths of different ways-of-knowing can facilitate a more holistic understanding of these

Virtual interviews are commonplace these days, but I want you to imagine a different kind of virtual interview for a moment; one where you aren’t worried about camera angle or saying the wrong thing; an interview that’s about drawing the other person out, putting them at their ease, and helping them tell their story. That’s what I get to do for each episode of my new podcast, and it has been more rewarding

Olaf LF Weyl, 48, Chief Scientist at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) passed away on the Wolf River in Hogsback, South Africa on 14 November. Born in Giessen, Germany, Olaf was raised in southern Africa, where his parents served as development workers. Driven by a passion for fishes and tireless work ethic, Olaf devoted his career towards understanding freshwater ecosystems

Long‐time professor and American Fisheries Society member Robert G. Werner (Bob) passed away on September 13, 2020 at age 84 following a 6‐month battle with cancer. Bob was an active and long‐standing supporter and contributor to AFS, the Northeast Division, and the New York Chapter, for which he served as president in 1976. He was born in Indiana and served in the U.S. Marine Corps, stationed in California

Despite immense resources directed towards habitat restoration, recovering fish populations remains a daunting and perplexing issue. In 2015, recommendations for a comprehensive approach to habitat restoration in the Columbia River basin were published in Fisheries, which included elements of landscape ecology and resilience, broad public support, governance for collaboration and integration, and capacity

In 1976, the American Fisheries Society (AFS) launched the inaugural issue of Fisheries magazine. Nestled on the lower half of page 27 lay a photo of a bikini‐clad woman on the beach with the caption “This photo doesn’t have any direct relevance to FISHERIES, but your Editor came across it in the Society’s Hawaii meeting photo file and thought the membership might like to share the view.” In the second

River fragmentation has adverse effects on fish populations due to restricted migratory pattern, resulting in risk of population extinction. It has been hypothesized that river fragmentation has led to changes in fish population structure. To test the hypothesis, 149 Golden Mahseer Tor putitora were collected from seven locations, including the Ganga River and upstream and downstream of two impounded

It should have been one stupendous 150th celebration in Columbus, Ohio, this past August, but we all know what happened. For only the second time in AFS history, our in‐person annual meeting was cancelled (the other time being World War 2). While we were fortunate enough to host a Virtual Annual Meeting, the events celebrating the 150th in Columbus were postponed to the 2021 Annual Meeting in Baltimore

2020 has certainly been a tumultuous year for those of us in the United States, and this tumult has had effects on the entire world. The year started with the global and still growing coronavirus pandemic, and continued though controversial shootings by police in the United States and related global protests for racial justice, a number of controversial changes in U.S. environmental regulations, and

Black bass Micropterus spp. are highly sought‐after sport fish and, where introduced, are emblematic of the tradeoffs between ensuring productive fisheries and conserving native biodiversity. To disentangle these potentially conflicting interests, we administered a survey of fisheries biologists in the United States to assess perceptions regarding ecological and economic impacts of non‐native black

Inland fisheries are often complex, spatially dispersed, and seasonal. A lack of monitoring can result in unreliable or incomplete catch data, suggesting a role for assessment methods based on population size structure. This paper evaluates and compares empirical size‐based indicators and the length‐based spawning potential ratio model as candidate tools for assessing data‐limited commercial fisheries

Many readers will know Don Noakes as the founding editor of Marine and Coastal Fisheries. Our fisheries science and management community lost Don on October 19, 2020 from complications associated with spinal cancer. He was only 65 years old and just retired in 2019. Don was proud to have graduated from the University of Waterloo as an engineer with expertise in applied time series modelling. He was

As an initial step towards the implementation of an ecosystem‐based approach to management, the Caribbean Fishery Management Council has recently ratified three island‐based fishery management plans that will supplant the existing regional plans. The newly formed management plans account for nuances among the island platforms in the U.S. Caribbean, including ecological, cultural, and social considerations

Nobody would argue with the premise that the human brain is a wonder of biological engineering. It composes only 2% of our body weight, but consumes around 20% of our oxygen supply, blood flow, and energy. Some 100 billion neurons can process 11 million bits of information per second. But our conscious processing only can handle around 50 bits per second, so most of what our brain is doing is invisible

Facing challenges of the COVID‐19 pandemic, government agencies had to quickly react and provide guidelines for outdoor activities such as recreational fishing. Here we review information provided by provincial and state natural resource management agencies in North America during the March–April 2020 period to collate freshwater fishing regulations implemented during the pandemic. Among the 63 jurisdictions

The 2020 Hutton Junior Fisheries Biology Program marked not only the 20th summer that the American Fisheries Society has been offering summer internship placements for high school students, but an opportunity for 11 students to still participate in their Hutton internships, despite the global pandemic. The Hutton Program is a paid internship program sponsored by the American Fisheries Society and its

We present a 100‐Watt protocol for backpack electrofishing to capture salmonids in small streams. The protocol requires that electrofisher settings produce ~100 W of average power output. Since 2000, the protocol has been used in Idaho streams ranging in ambient conductivity from ~20–1,000 µS/cm and water temperatures from ~0–28°C, and results in satisfactory capture efficiency and desired fish response

There are ~250,000 lakes in Ontario that support important cultural, recreational, and economic fisheries. In 2005, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry adopted the Ecological Framework for Recreational Fisheries Management to tackle the heterogeneity of lake resources and angler mobility across the landscape, increase public participation in fisheries management, and streamline an

Effective engagement among scientists, government agency staff, and policymakers is necessary for solving fisheries challenges, but remains challenging for a variety of reasons. We present seven practices learned from a collaborative project focused on invasive species in the Great Lakes region (USA‐CAN). These practices were based on a researcher–manager model composed of a research team, a management

The Cisco Coregonus artedi is a planktivorous fish that is widely distributed in lakes across glaciated areas of North America. With retreat of Laurentide ice, Cisco dispersed from refugia into a vast network of meltwater (proglacial) lakes that eventually receded, stranding populations in depressions—today’s lakes. Refugial populations also colonized lakes that fell outside of the footprint of a proglacial

The American Fisheries Society (AFS) was founded during the early days of North American fish propagation, when pioneering fish culturists first began to coax food and fishing opportunities from pails of eggs and wriggling fry. In the absence of effective regulations and the will to enforce measures to prevent overfishing and habitat loss, fisheries professionals looked to hatcheries to fully address

Robb Francis Leary of Missoula, Montana passed on to that great fishing ground in the sky on Monday, July 27, 2020 after a long battle with several health issues. Robb was born on April 11, 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut to Frank R. Leary, Jr. and Arloa Dean Leary. He spent his childhood in the northern Connecticut towns of Suffield and Windsor Locks. In high school Robb won championships in cross country

Open Educational Resources (OERs) represent any form of educational resource that is available free of charge. Few OERs exist for courses in fisheries or other life science courses, and the onset of the COVID‐19 epidemic only exacerbates the need for such resources. To rectify this shortcoming, we build on earlier work (Grossman and Chernoff 2018) and present four OERs designed for fisheries classes

“We are living in unprecedented times.” We hear this almost daily relative to the current COVID‐19 pandemic, the related economic crises, concurrent civil unrest demanding criminal, and social justice reform. Certainly AFS is now in uncharted territory, with the cancellation of all face‐to‐face meetings forcing us to move to virtual meetings. This pandemic forced us to drastically modify the format

In the span of a week, Michael J. Maceina, Professor Emeritus at Auburn University, went from fishing with his family near Mobile Bay to passing peacefully at home in his own bed on June 10, 2020. During his brief battle with prostate cancer he did not stop fishing, he did not stop hunting, and he did not stop spending quality time with family and friends.

Growing up along the Gulf Coast, wild caught seafood was abundant and affordable. Even in the leanest financial times, there were feasts from the natural bounty of the briny waters—boiled shrimp, marinated blue crab, pan‐fried speckled trout, and char grilled oysters. But, times they are a changing. The future of our seafood supply is something policymakers must address. Demand for fish and shellfish

Ronald W. Goede passed away, age 86, of complications related to cancer. His last days were at home under hospice care with his wife Lisa and family at his side. He was born in Columbus, Nebraska, and graduated from high school in Lincoln. Ron served eight years in the Air Force and earned a B.Sc. from the University of Nebraska, majoring in Zoology and Botany. He completed a M.Sc. in Fisheries Biology

Goals are important for the effective execution of public trust responsibilities by state inland fisheries bureaus, but formulating meaningful goals is not simple. Often bureaus look to their past and to their sister bureaus in neighboring states when crafting goals for their own freshwater resources. Herein, we review the goal themes of fisheries bureaus using publicly available documents and guided

The Smallmouth Bass Micropterus dolomieu fishery in the Susquehanna River basin, Pennsylvania, is one of the most socioeconomically important fisheries in the region and has recently undergone considerable changes. These changes started in 2005, when disease was documented in young‐of‐the‐year (age‐0) Smallmouth Bass. Shortly thereafter, declines in abundance of both juveniles and adults were observed

The historical context of current environmental conditions offers vital guidance to North American fisheries professionals as they strive to develop effective management plans and policies. Through this retrospective we highlight the remarkable historic fisheries resources and reasons for establishing public fisheries agencies and the American Fisheries Society (AFS). Through a review of primary historical