Longjaw cisco
Extinct species of fish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The longjaw cisco (Coregonus alpenae) was a deep-water cisco or chub, usually caught at depths of 100 metres (328 ft) or more from Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Erie. Its Latin name was derived from Alpena, a city in Michigan. Silver colored and growing to a maximum length of about 30 centimeters (12 inches) long, the extinction of longjaw cisco was a result of overfishing, pollution of the Great Lakes and the disruption of Great Lakes food chains after the introduction of the sea lamprey.[4]
| Longjaw cisco | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Division: | Teleostei |
| Order: | Salmoniformes |
| Family: | Salmonidae |
| Genus: | Coregonus |
| Species: | †C. alpenae |
| Binomial name | |
| †Coregonus alpenae Koelz, 1924 | |
The systematics of the group of fishes called "ciscoes" is complicated and scientists now generally believe that the longjaw cisco was not a separate species, but a distinctive population of large-bodied individuals of shortjaw cisco (Coregonus zenithicus).[citation needed]
The deepwater cisco fishery caught longjaw ciscoes and sold them as "smoked herring". The commercial catch peaked around the 1930s when about one-third of the catch of ciscoes was this species.[citation needed]
No individuals have been reported in commercial fish catches since 1967, and in Ontario the last individual was recorded from Georgian Bay in 1975.[citation needed]
