Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Volume 78, Issue 9, Page iii-iii, September 2021.

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Effective conservation requires that species recovery measures are informed by rigorous scientific research. For imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels in Canada, numerous research gaps exist, in part owing to the need for specialized research methods. The Canadian Freshwater Species at Risk Research Network (SARNET) was formed and

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. More than 15 years have passed since Canada’s Species at Risk Act was enacted. To evaluate scientific progress in support of the Act, we identified research accomplishments up to 2017 for imperilled aquatic species in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence River basin based on recovery documents and an expert survey, spanning 1182 activities

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. In data-poor regions, modeled river temperatures are essential for predicting potential stressors for species at risk. With limited data from the Grand, Thames, and Sydenham rivers in southern Ontario, Canada, we evaluated simple mixed-effect regression models to predict water temperature using air temperature from nearby weather stations

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print.

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Understanding population-level habitat requirements is important for the effective conservation of imperilled species, especially for those with fragmented distributions. This study examined fine-scale distribution of the threatened pugnose shiner (Notropis anogenus) in the upper St. Lawrence River, Ontario, Canada. Occupancy modelling

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Human-driven environmental change underlies recent changes in water clarity in many of the world’s great lakes, yet our understanding of the consequences of these changes on the fish and fisheries they support remains incomplete. Herein, we offer a framework to organize current knowledge, guide future research, and help fisheries managers

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. American eel (Anguilla rostrata) often pass hydropower dams during adult spawning migrations. We conducted a 4-year acoustic telemetry study that characterized passage risks through two dams (West Enfield and Milford) in the Penobscot River, Maine, USA. We released tagged fish (n = 355) at two sites, estimated survival and delay under

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. In response to fisheries declines and delayed population recoveries, many management agencies globally are integrating alternative strategies that incorporate precautionary and ecosystem considerations, increasingly focusing on climate variability and change. Here, we quantitatively evaluate how these themes have been incorporated

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Volume 78, Issue 7, Page iii-v, July 2021.

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Drift-feeding fish are typically considered size-selective predators. Yet, few studies have explicitly tested which aspect of prey “size” best explains size selection by drift-foraging fish. Here, we develop a Bayesian discrete choice model to evaluate how attributes of both prey and predator simultaneously influence size-selective

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. For freshwater fishes, elevated water temperatures associated with climate warming and hypoxia can co-occur and are likely to interact as both affect oxidative metabolism. We quantified the effects of acclimation to elevated temperature and hypoxia on the thermal tolerance of pugnose shiner (Notropis anogenus), a cyprinid fish threatened

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print.

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Hatchery salmonid smolts are often reared using groundwater with elevated temperatures to maximize growth. Previous work has shown that rearing hatchery smolts in surface water with a more natural thermal regime resulted in increased return rates of adult landlocked Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). We evaluated whether landlocked Atlantic

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionidae) are the most imperilled taxon in Canada. To facilitate species recovery efforts, an understanding of species distribution and habitat that supports species persistence is needed. Detecting mussels presents unique challenges and requires considerable effort owing to their complex life histories

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Volume 78, Issue 5, Page 623-630, May 2021. Small pelagic fish support some of the largest fisheries globally, yet there is an ongoing debate about the magnitude of the impacts of environmental processes and fishing activities on target species. We use a nonparametric, nonlinear approach to quantify these effects on the Pacific sardine (Sardinops

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Quantifying the responses of rare and vulnerable species to environmental stressors poses special challenges. This study examined the responses of vulnerable fish species listed under the Species at Risk Act to environmental stressors in lakes, streams, and wetlands of the Canadian Great Lakes basin. We used a joint species distribution

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Reintroduction is an increasingly common conservation tool used to recover populations of imperilled species, but its success depends on the suitability of the introduced animals’ phenotype for their new habitat. For fishes, thermal tolerance may be a key trait in urbanized habitats. We compared thermal tolerance (CTmax) among three

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Captive breeding programs are widely applied by conservation practitioners as a means of conserving, reintroducing, and supplementing populations of imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels. We conducted a systematic map to provide an overview of the existing literature on the effectiveness of captive breeding and release programs

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. We compared the genetic diversity and structure of wild versus captive-propagated at-risk species of freshwater mussels in Canada, Lampsilis fasciola (wavy-rayed lampmussel; WRL) and Ptychobranchus fasciolaris (kidneyshell; KS), using microsatellite-generated genotypes. No significant differences were detected using Kruskal–Wallis

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Understanding migration patterns and habitat use is of great importance for management and conservation of marine living resources. The chemical composition of otoliths is influenced by the surrounding environment; therefore, they are indispensable data archives. To extract migration patterns and historical habitat use of individual

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Despite decades of commercial harvest of bigmouth buffalo (Ictiobus cyprinellus) from Jamestown Reservoir, North Dakota, and the recent rapid growth of sport bowfishing that targets this species, there is a lack of biological information on this native catostomid. At present, no-limit recreational and commercial harvest of bigmouth

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Understanding the dynamic nature of individual growth in stream-dwelling salmonids may help forecast consequences of climate change on northern fish populations. Here, we performed an experimental capture–mark–recapture study in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) to quantify factors influencing wintertime growth variation among juveniles

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. In mixed fisheries where multiple species are caught, to manage resources sustainably, knowledge about the species-specific vulnerability to fishing is equally or even more important than knowledge of size selectivity of the gear. We compared the vulnerability to bait recreational angling in four salmonid species in natural streams

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Despite extensive records of chemical recovery, relatively little is known about recovery of aquatic biota in Sudbury (Ontario, Canada). Cladocera (Branchiopoda) are key components of lake food webs, and understanding spatial patterns in their assemblages may emphasize ecosystem recovery challenges. Paleolimnological techniques complement

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) are a large, highly migratory fish distributed throughout the North Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas currently managed as two discrete stocks: western and eastern. Both stocks forage in the North Atlantic, and a high degree of intermixing occurs, which combined with limited single-stock survey

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Mortality rates are major determinants of long-term sustainability of exploited fish populations, yet accurately estimating these rates can be challenging. We used simulations to evaluate nonspatial and spatial modeling approaches for estimating mortality rates from acoustic telemetry detection data. Data were generated assuming different

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. In subarctic Newfoundland, age-0 Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) settle into coastal habitats in several summer–autumn pulses, resulting in broad length-frequency distributions before winter. Low winter temperatures and potential decreases in food availability pose challenges for young-of-year fish. To examine how size variation affects

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Determination of population structure and stock identification is a general problem in fisheries assessment and management. Pacific salmon fishery management regimes are evolving to require higher resolution of stock composition on increasingly smaller reporting units. For Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), a stock identification

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Anthropogenic impacts on the landscape can drive biotic homogenization whereby distinct biological communities become more similar to one another over time. Land-use change in the Southern Appalachian region of the United States is expected to result in homogenization of the highly diverse freshwater fish communities as in-stream habitat

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Alternative migratory tactics, like partial migration, are common in many taxa. The proximate and ultimate drivers underpinning these strategies are unclear, though factors like condition and energetic status have been posited as important predictors. We sampled and PIT-tagged 1882 wild brown trout (Salmo trutta) prior to the first

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Distinguishing the cause and magnitude of capture-related mortality (CRM) in fishes is important for effective management. To better understand CRM in yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) released in the recreational troll fishery off the United States east coast, 48 fish (76–127 cm curved fork length, CFL) were monitored for up to 86

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Despite the need to quantify total catch to support sustainable fisheries management, estimating harvests of recreational fishers remains a challenge. Harvest estimates from mark–recapture studies have proven valuable, yet animal movements and migrations may bias some of these estimates. To improve recreational harvest estimates, explore

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Run-of-river (RoR) hydroelectric power provides renewable energy with potentially less impact on fish habitat productivity than large, reservoir-storage hydroelectric projects. This is the first empirical study of resident fish response to water diversion at RoR projects in BC, where the abundance of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Habitat loss, acid precipitation, and non-native species have drastically reduced the number of Adirondack waterbodies occupied by round whitefish (Prosopium cylindraceum). The goal of this study was to (1) increase the probability of reintroduction success by modeling the suitability of ponds for reintroduction and (2) better understand

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Surmounting evidence supports that infectious agents play a critical role in shaping fish physiology, behaviour, and survival. The exclusion of disease-causing agents from fisheries research has resulted in major knowledge gaps that may limit the predictive capacity of ecological models. A major barrier in wild fisheries epidemiology

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. The Salish sucker (Catostomus sp. cf. catostomus) is a federally Threatened species in Canada, inhabiting small lowland streams along with juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in southwestern British Columbia and adjacent Washington State. Experiments were conducted in two ponds to determine the effects of reduced flow on dissolved

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. The physiology and behaviour of fish are strongly affected by ambient water temperature. Physiological traits related to metabolism, such as aerobic scope (AS), can be measured across temperature gradients, and the resulting performance curve reflects the thermal niche that fish can occupy. We measured AS of westslope cutthroat trout

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Impacts of Karenia brevis red tide blooms have been an increasing cause of concern for fisheries management in the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf). The 2019 Gulf red grouper (Epinephelus morio) stock assessment was confronted with the challenges of quantifying and parameterizing red tides during both historical and projection time periods. Red

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Little attention has been given to optimizing statistical power for monitoring stream fish assemblages. We explored the relationship between temporal variability and statistical power using 34 metrics from fish community data collected annually at six sites over 10 years via electrofishing. Metric variability differed by the life stage

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) recorded in the otoliths of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) are commonly used to identify natal origin. For species that migrate at or soon after emergence, the embryonic region of the otolith provides the only record of provenance. However, maternal contribution of Sr from the yolk can confound the

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Animal interactions are an integral part of a community’s function, with influences ranging from the spatiotemporal habitat use of species to population effects to ecosystem management. Numerous non-native species are established or maintained through stocking in freshwater ecosystems with the potential to affect restoration of native

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. The widely accepted belief that hatchery-origin salmon survive less well than natural-origin or wild salmon can be, at least in part, an artifact of the way hatchery salmon survival is estimated. Hatchery salmon are often marked several months before release, while natural salmon are marked during their seaward migration. Underestimated

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. This paper explores the potential economic gains of allowing additional flexibility in gear choice, within rights-based management programs. A case study of US west coast sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) provides an example of a commercially important species where gear-switching is currently occurring within the individual fishing quota

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. To understand the effects of widespread urbanization and agricultural impacts on recovery of Salish sucker (Catostomus sp. cf. catostomus), a federally threatened catostomid endemic to the lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, we assessed (i) the current extent and effects of hypoxia on the distribution of Salish sucker and juvenile

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Removal of non-native fish populations can be crucial to the conservation of native species, but often presents a complex challenge for managers. The goal of Trojan Y chromosome (TYC) programs is to skew the non-native sex ratio until only males remain, leading to eradication. We present results from a simulation model used to explore

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Landscape ecology has mainly been integrated in aquatic science to describe patterns and processes in stream networks, but many lakes are connected through their tributaries and are also impacted by their position and connectivity within the watershed. This information on lake characteristics can be used by inland fisheries managers

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print.

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Coastal Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the Northeast Atlantic has seen a continuous decline since the industrialization of the coastal fishery, and management needs to address the spatial and temporal complexities of coexisting cod stocks. Toward that end, genetic analyses and oceanographic modelling of coastal and oceanic cod larval

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. There is a need to explicitly consider metapopulation dynamics in the development of conservation strategies for spatially structured populations. We examined the spatial dynamics of sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) that spawn in 36 streams of the Stuart River watershed in British Columbia, Canada, using a 69-year record of spawner

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Climate change and non-native species are considered two of the biggest threats to native salmonids in North America. We evaluated how non-native salmonids and stream temperature and discharge were associated with Yellowstone cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri) distribution, abundance, and body size to gain a more complete

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Choosing whether or not to migrate is an important life history decision for many fishes. Here we combine data from physical captures and detections on autonomous passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag antennas to study migration in an endangered fish, the humpback chub (Gila cypha). We develop hidden Markov mark–recapture models

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Salmonids frequently adapt their feeding and movement strategies to cope with seasonally fluctuating stream environments. Oncorhynchus mykiss tend to drift-forage in higher velocity habitat than other salmonids, yet their presence in streams with seasonally low velocity and drift suggests behavioral flexibility. We combined 3D videogrammetry

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Robust assessment and monitoring programs are critical for effective conservation, yet for many taxa we fail to understand how trade-offs in sampling design affect power to detect population trends and describe spatial patterns. We tested an occupancy-based sampling approach to evaluate design considerations for detecting watershed-scale

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. State-space population models are becoming a common tool to guide natural resource management, because they address the statistical challenges arising from high observation error and process variation while improving inference by integrating multiple, disparate datasets. A hierarchical state-space life cycle model was developed, motivated

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Fish foraging and energy flow between trophic levels are predicted to decline with freshwater browning due to decreased light availability. Studies investigating these predictions have focused on juvenile and adult fishes; however, the larval stage represents a “critical period” in development. We investigated the indirect (i.e., prey

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. A major strength of the guild approach is its ability to simplify community analysis by aggregating species with similar roles or functions into groups. These groups can be used to study a number of important ecological concepts, including functional diversity, community response to disturbance, and food-web dynamics. Despite increased

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Networks play a key role in the functioning of socioecological fishery systems. Most network studies among fish harvesters examining fishing success utilize interviews and questionnaires. Though insightful, such studies are resource and time-intensive and thus unlikely to be replicated frequently through time. Alternatively, commercial

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Two laboratory studies evaluated small Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) (36–99 mm fork length (FL), 0.7%–26.7% tag burden) survival, tag retention, and growth (n = 539) and critical swimming speed (Ucrit; n = 241). Fish were implanted with a new active acoustic tag and compared with untagged controls at 12 and 17 °C. Across

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print. Walleye (Sander vitreus) population declines have been linked to climate change, but it is unclear how the growth of this cool-water species may be affected by warming water temperatures. Because warming rates vary among lakes, it is uncertain whether lake characteristics may mediate the temperature effects on walleye growth or may