Aim: Migratory freshwater fishes are those that must access discrete habitats to complete their life cycles. Freshwater fish migrations occur around the world and provide numerous ecosystem services for humans and natural systems; however, many migratory species are in decline globally. A limiting factor to successfully conserve freshwater migratory fishes is that the migratory life histories of many species are unknown or only partially described. To provide researchers with critical and comprehensive information to conserve migratory fishes, we developed the North American Freshwater Migratory Fish Database (NAFMFD). Location: Canada, Mexico and the United States. Taxon: Freshwater fish. Methods: To develop this database, we assigned migratory status, pattern and behaviour to a comprehensive list of freshwater fish species found throughout North America. We assembled the database which included assignments (i.e. migratory status, pattern and behaviour) as well as the sources used to make the assignments. Researchers and managers from across North America reviewed the database for completeness and accuracy on the migratory life histories of fishes. Results: The database synthesizes current knowledge of migratory status, pattern and behaviour of native and non-native freshwater fishes throughout North America, including 1250 species representing 79 families and 325 genera. Results showcase the diversity of migratory life histories of freshwater fishes on the continent, including that at least 25% of North American freshwater fishes are migratory, 23% are non-migratory and 44% have undetermined migratory status. Main conclusions: NAFMFD improves the quality of migratory data accessible to researchers, which supports a more holistic understanding of the threats encountered by migratory fishes, including habitat fragmentation. The approach we used in developing NAFMFD can provide guidance for developing similar databases in other regions. Collectively, our work offers new insights into the range of freshwater fish migratory life histories, stimulating a need to better understand this diversity globally.

Fish population structure in previously glaciated regions is often influenced by natural colonization processes and human-mediated dispersal, including fish stocking. Endemic populations are of conservation interest because they may contain rare and unique genetic variation. While coregonines are native to certain Michigan inland lakes, some were stocked with fish from Great Lakes sources, calling into question the origin of extant populations. While most stocking targeted lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis), cisco (C. artedi) were also stocked from the Great Lakes to inland waterbodies. We used population genetic data (microsatellite genotypes and mitochondrial (mt)DNA sequences), coalescent modeling, and approximate Bayesian computation to investigate the origins of 12 inland Michigan cisco populations. The spatial distribution of mtDNA haplotypes suggests Michigan is an introgression zone for two ancestral cisco lineages associated with separate glacial refugia. Low levels of genetic diversity and high levels of genetic divergence were observed for populations located well inland of the Great Lakes relative to populations occupying waterbodies near the Great Lakes. Estimates of recent Great Lakes gene flow ranged from 27 to 48% for populations near the Great Lakes shoreline but were substantially lower (under 8%) for populations further inland. Inland lakes with elevated recent gene flow estimates may have been recipients of stocked coregonine fry, including cisco. Low levels of genetic diversity paired with a high likelihood of endemism as indicated by strong genetic divergence and low Great Lakes population inputs suggest the analyzed cisco populations occupying southern Michigan kettle lakes are of elevated conservation interest.

The Asian fish tapeworm (Schyzocotyle acheilognathi syn. Bothriocephalus acheilognathi) (AFT) is an invasive parasite that can infect many species of fish, although most hosts are primarily members of Cyprinidae. Pathogenicity has most often been reported in aquaculture settings in fry and fingerling stages of carp (Cyprinus spp.). More recently, it has been shown to cause growth retardation in the endangered bonytail chub (Gila elegans) and found to be widespread in populations of endangered humpback chub (Gila cypha) in the Colorado River, Grand Canyon, Arizona. AFT spreads most often through the transport of infected fish, particularly baitfish. Despite its harmful potential, there is no efficient or accurate ante mortem test to detect AFT in water or fish samples before transport. Herein, we report on the development of a sensitive and specific loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay to detect the parasite in under 30 min from laboratory prepared samples. Six LAMP primers were designed to amplify a variable region of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene in AFT with the detection and quantification of DNA on a real-time fluorometer. The limit of detection was 1 x 10(1) copies/mu l of DNA extracted from as few as 2 AFT eggs. Future application of our assay would be a low-cost test to rapidly and accurately detect AFT DNA from environmental samples on-site so that preventive actions can be taken to halt the spread of the AFT through the movement of infected fish.

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 the problem of fisheries in decline. In the intervening decades, it became clear that hatcheries were not a panacea, but could be an effective tool for both enhancement and recovery. Fish culture has been practiced in North America for well over 150 years. Thanks partly to AFS and its members, why and how we propagate fish has changed dramatically during that time. In this piece, we briefly recount the history of North American fish culture, how AFS has influenced our understanding and use of hatcheries and hatchery‐origin fish, and provide a glimpse of what transformations may yet await fish culturists.

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 documents and literature for North America, this paper identifies factors contributing to the founding of AFS and public fish commissions; shows how selected resource issues evolved; and documents how and why selected fisheries and aquatic habitat policies changed in response to those issues. Overexploitation, landscape-scale habitat alterations, mining, and dams were the causative agents for emergence of fisheries agencies and AFS, and these factors remain relevant today. Beginning in the 1960s, after 100 years of policy inaction, North Americans grew tired of degraded waters and fisheries and forced policy changes that have directly and indirectly affected the fisheries we manage today. The historical events and resulting corrective legislation are taken for granted by those unaware that AFS has actively participated in developing policies to address these environmental harms. Further, AFS continues to play a vital role in identifying key issues, providing conduits for information to cope with impairments, and advocating for policies to conserve intact habitats and improve degraded systems. The struggles documented in this paper offer crucial lessons as we continue to be challenged by legacy resource issues and face emerging environmental stressors, such as climate change, as well as regression in long-standing environmental protection policies.

Over much of the history of fisheries management, fisheries biologists challenged with the conservation of degraded fisheries habitats have primarily focused on addressing the symptoms of habitat degradation as opposed to confronting the overarching processes and factors that control fish habitat condition. This is often attributable to the substantial amount of inaccessible or unorganized data that confound resource management decisions. The National Fish Habitat Partnership (NFHP) was formed in 2006 to provide a science-based, holistic, and voluntary-based approach to address the trillions of U.S. dollars in damages that have been inflicted on fish habitats in the United States. The NFHP uses a periodically measured, landscape level national fish habitat assessment to identify intact systems that need conservation or protection and to assess the root causes of aquatic habitat degradation in altered systems. Categories of data and information contained within the NFHP national fish habitat assessment consist of hydrology, connectivity, water quality, material transport and recruitment, geomorphology, and aquatic organisms' effect on habitat and energy flow. These processes are critically important in controlling fish habitat condition in all types of aquatic systems, with the key differences being the relative importance and the rates in which the processes and factors operate. Data and information on fish and aquatic organisms and social data are the other components needed to build a comprehensive assessment and decision support framework for fish habitats in the United States. A framework for a model national fish habitat assessment (model assessment) is outlined herein, with each category described in measurable subcomponents that are actionable by fisheries biologists or other aquatic resource managers. Key variables for each process and factor, along with needed data and information for development of dose-response relationships and social data for societal importance indication, are also provided. Although much of the data to fully populate a model assessment are not available currently, it is important to establish a vision for the future. Many of the envisioned data necessary for a model assessment are available on a localized or regional basis to enable the detailed analyses to occur on those spatial scales, allowing the testing of the robustness of the framework. Once the model assessment is fully developed, aquatic resource managers will have a powerful tool to prioritize the trillions of dollars needed to conserve intact and rehabilitate degraded aquatic habitats to build self-sustaining and resilient fish communities. The tool will also help facilitate the NFHP's goals to maintain intact systems and to move degraded system processes and factors back to within 25% of the expected norms for those watersheds.

Over the past century, populations of Lake Trout Salvelinus namaycush have declined throughout the Great Lakes basin due to overfishing, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, and associated recruitment issues from high thiaminase, as well as emerging infectious diseases. To combat these declines, state and federal fishery management agencies undertook substantial stock enhancement efforts, including more stringent regulation of sport and commercial catch limits and increasing hatchery propagation of Lake Trout stocked into Great Lakes basin waterways. One state fish hatchery involved in these rehabilitation efforts experienced mass mortality events in 2012 and 2017. In 2012, following a period of abnormally heavy rain, hatchery staff observed abnormal behavior followed by increased mortalities in two strains of Lake Trout fingerlings, reaching upwards of 20% mortality and totaling a loss of approximately 100,000 fish. In 2017, following another heavy-rain season, 6-8% of 2-year-old Lake Trout experienced morbidity and mortality similar to that observed in 2012. During the 2012 event, Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis and splake (Lake Trout x Brook Trout hybrid) reared in flow-through systems receiving water from diseased Lake Trout remained clinically unaffected. Molecular analyses revealed all lots of affected Lake Trout were infected with the salmonid herpesvirus-3 (epizootic epitheliotropic disease virus [EEDV]), a disease that caused complete depopulation of this hatchery in the late 1980s and until 2012 was never again detected in this hatchery or in Michigan. Further sampling detected EEDV in apparently healthy 5-year-old Lake Trout and in wild Mottled Sculpin Cottus bairdii collected in the hatchery source water. The ability of the virus to replicate in tissues of infected fish was verified by exposing naive Lake Trout to the filtered tissue homogenates of infected fish resulting in similar disease signs. Despite the virus going undetected for many years, these two EEDV episodes clearly demonstrate the continued presence of this deadly herpesvirus in the Great Lakes basin.

Indigenous small cyprinid fish species play an important role in Great Lakes ecosystems and also comprise the backbone of a multimillion-dollar baitfish industry. Due to their widespread use in sport fisheries of the Laurentian Great Lakes, there are increasing concerns that baitfish may introduce or disseminate fish pathogens. In this study, we evaluated whether baitfish purchased from 78 randomly selected retail bait dealers in Michigan harbored fish viruses. Between September 2015 and June 2016, 5,400 baitfish divided into 90 lots of 60 fish were purchased. Fish were tested for the presence of viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), spring viremia of carp virus (SVCV), golden shiner reovirus (GSRV), fathead minnow nidovirus (FHMNV), fathead minnow picornavirus (FHMPV), and white sucker bunyavirus (WSBV). Using the epithelioma papulosum cyprini cell line and molecular confirmation, we demonstrated the presence of viruses in 18 of the 90 fish lots (20.0%) analyzed. The most prevalent virus was FHMNV, being detected in 6 of 30 lots of Fathead Minnow Pimephales promelas and 3 of 42 lots of Emerald Shiners Notropis atherinoides. We also confirmed GSRV in two fish species: the Golden Shiner Notemigonus crysoleucas (5 of 11 lots) and Fathead Minnow (3 of 30 lots). Two VHSV (genotype IVb) isolates were recovered from a single lot of Emerald Shiners. No SVCV, FHMPV, or WSBV was detected in any of the fish examined. Some of the infected fish exhibited clinical signs and histopathological alterations. This study demonstrates that live baitfish are a potential vector for the spread of viral pathogens and underscores the importance of fish health certifications for the Great Lakes baitfish industry.

Resource allocation for fisheries management and conservation in the United States has not grown substantially in recent years, and there is ongoing debate over how limited resources should be used to create, maintain, or restore fisheries. Hatcheries have been in existence in North America since 1848, but their organization and role in fisheries management are not widely understood or appreciated. The continuing debate about hatcheries has painted them in broad strokes, with critics suggesting that hatcheries are altogether ineffective, unnecessary, too costly to operate, or do more harm than good to wild populations. Such characterizations fail to capture the diversity of hatchery operations and do not acknowledge the hatchery reform initiatives of the past 20years or public expectations and legal requirements that influence the production and use of hatchery-origin fish. In this paper, we describe the current number and distribution of fish hatcheries operated for public purposes in North America, provide insights on the costs and benefits of hatcheries operated for public use and other public trust purposes, provide initial cost comparisons to habitat rehabilitation or restoration, and consider the role of hatcheries into the future as a fisheries management tool.

Effective water quality management depends on enactment of appropriately designed monitoring programs to reveal current and forecasted conditions. Because water quality conditions are influenced by numerous factors, commonly measured attributes such as total phosphorus (TP) can be highly temporally varying. For highly varying processes, monitoring programs should be long-term and periodic quantitative analyses are needed so that temporal trends can be distinguished from stochastic variation, which can yield insights into potential modifications to the program. Using generalized additive mixed modeling, we assessed temporal (yearly and monthly) trends and quantified other sources of variation (daily and subsampling) in TP concentrations from a multidecadal depth-specific monitoring program on Big Platte Lake, Michigan. Yearly TP concentrations decreased from the late 1980s to late 1990s before rebounding through the early 2000s. At depths of 2.29 to 13.72 m, TP concentrations have cycled around stationary points since the early 2000s, while at the surface and depths ≥ 18.29 concentrations have continued declining. Summer and fall peaks in TP concentrations were observed at most depths, with the fall peak at deeper depths occurring 1 month earlier than shallower depths. Daily sampling variation (i.e., variation within a given month and year) was greatest at shallowest and deepest depths. Variation in subsamples collected from depth-specific water samples constituted a small fraction of total variation. Based on model results, cost-saving measures to consider for the monitoring program include reducing subsampling of depth-specific concentrations and reducing the number of sampling depths given observed consistencies across the program period.

A detailed review of historical literature and museum data revealed that flathead catfish were not historically native in the Great Lakes Basin, with the possible exception of a relict population in Lake Erie. The species has invaded Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, Lake Huron, nearly all drainages in Michigan, and the Fox/Wolf and Milwaukee drainages in Wisconsin. They have not been collected from Lake Superior yet, and the temperature suitability of that lake is questionable. Flathead catfish have been stocked sparingly in the Great Lakes and is not the mechanism responsible for their spread. A stocking in 1968 in Ohio may be one exception to this. Dispersal resulted from both natural range expansions and unauthorized introductions. The invasion is ongoing, with the species invading both from the east and the west to meet in northern Lake Michigan. Much of this invasion has likely taken place since the 1990s. This species has been documented to have significant impacts on native fishes in other areas where it has been introduced; therefore, educating the public not to release them into new waters is important. Frequent monitoring of rivers and lakes for the presence of this species would detect new populations early so that management actions could be utilized on new populations if desired.

The Asian fish tapeworm Schyzocotyle acheilognathi (Yamaguti, 1934) is an important fish pathogen because of its wide range of intermediate and definitive hosts and its pathological consequences. This study was designed to determine if baitfish are a likely vector contributing to the expansion of the invasive Asian fish tapeworm.

Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus genotype IVb (VHSV IVb) has caused major, sporadic fish die-offs in the Laurentian Great Lakes region of North America since 2005. Presently, factors affecting VHSV IVb persistence in enzootic systems are not well understood. Even with annual surveillance, the virus can go undetected for several years after an outbreak before again re-emerging, which suggests that the virus is maintained in the system either below detectable levels or in untested reservoirs. The aim of this study was to identify potential reservoirs of VHSV IVb in Budd Lake, Michigan; VHSV IVb was first detected in Budd Lake in 2007 but remained undetected until 2011. Additionally, we explored the susceptibility of naive fish introduced into a water body enzootic for VHSV IVb by stocking age-0 Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides at varying densities into enclosures in the lake. The virus was not detected among samples of the fishes Notropis spp. and Lepomis spp., cylindrical papershell mussels Anodontoides ferussacianus, leeches (subclass Hirudinea), sediment, or water. However, the virus was successfully isolated from amphipods (family Hyalellidae) and Largemouth Bass held in the enclosures. Our finding of VHSV IVb in Hyalellidae amphipods in combination with other research that has detected the virus in Diporeia spp., a large benthic amphipod important as a food resource to Great Lake fishes, suggests that benthic macroinvertebrates are a reservoir for VHSV IVb in infected systems. If there are environmental reservoirs for VHSV IVb in infected systems, they are likely unevenly distributed. Findings of this study add to our understanding of the seemingly complex ecology of this deadly and economically detrimental virus. Received February 22, 2016; accepted October 16, 2016.

A total of 1,270 cyprinids consisting of emerald shiners, Notropis atherinoides Rafinesque, 1818; spottail shiners, Notropis hudsonius (Clinton, 1824); mimic shiners, Notropis volucellus (Cope, 1865); and sand shiners, Notropis stramineus (Cope, 1865) (Cyprinidae) collected in 20092013 from Saginaw Bay and Port Sanilac, Lake Huron, and Lake St. Clair, Michigan, U.S.A., were examined for the nonnative Asian fish tapeworm, Bothriocephalus acheilognathi. The prevalences, mean intensities, and mean abundances of this cestode in the cyprinid species varied from 0 to 28%, 0.0 to 5.8, and 0.00 to 1.11, respectively. The infection values of B. acheilognathi were higher in Notropis spp. from Saginaw Bay than in Lake St. Clair. The proportions of infected and uninfected emerald shiners increased significantly from 2009 through 2011 and 2013 in Saginaw Bay. Emerald and mimic shiners are new host records for B. acheilognathi. Saginaw Bay and Port Sanilac, Lake Huron, and Lake St. Clair are new locality records for B. acheilognathi. The distribution of B. acheilognathi now extends north into Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron since its original detection in the Detroit River. Further, since Saginaw Bay and Lake St. Clair are important sources of wild-caught baitfish for the retail baitfish industry, this range extension of the Asian fish tapeworm raises fish management concerns for its spread into other waters of the state through bait bucket transfers.

Environmental variation and landscape features affect ecological processes in fluvial systems; however, assessing effects at management-relevant temporal and spatial scales is challenging. Genetic data can be used with landscape models and traditional ecological assessment data to identify biodiversity hotspots, predict ecosystem responses to anthropogenic effects, and detect impairments to underlying processes. We show that by combining taxonomic, demographic, and genetic data of species in complex riverscapes, managers can better understand the spatial and temporal scales over which environmental processes and disturbance influence biodiversity. We describe how population genetic models using empirical or simulated genetic data quantify effects of environmental processes affecting species diversity and distribution. Our summary shows that aquatic assessment initiatives that use standardized data sets to direct management actions can benefit from integration of genetic data to improve the predictability of disturbance-response relationships of river fishes and their habitats over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales.

Ecosystem‐based management of the Laurentian Great Lakes, which spans both the United States and Canada, is hampered by the lack of consistent binational watersheds for the entire Basin. Using comparable data sources and consistent methods, we developed spatially equivalent watershed boundaries for the binational extent of the Basin to create the Great Lakes Hydrography Dataset ( GLHD ). The GLHD consists of 5,589 watersheds for the entire Basin, covering a total area of approximately 547,967 km 2 , or about twice the 247,003 km 2 surface water area of the Great Lakes. The GLHD improves upon existing watershed efforts by delineating watersheds for the entire Basin using consistent methods; enhancing the precision of watershed delineation using recently developed flow direction grids that have been hydrologically enforced and vetted by provincial and federal water resource agencies; and increasing the accuracy of watershed boundaries by enforcing embayments, delineating watersheds on islands, and delineating watersheds for all tributaries draining to connecting channels. In addition, the GLHD is packaged in a publically available geodatabase that includes synthetic stream networks, reach catchments, watershed boundaries, a broad set of attribute data for each tributary, and metadata documenting methodology. The GLHD provides a common set of watersheds and associated hydrography data for the Basin that will enhance binational efforts to protect and restore the Great Lakes.