Critically Endangered
Atlantic whitefish
Coregonus huntsmani
The Atlantic whitefish is a coregonine fish inhabiting some freshwater lakes within Nova Scotia, Canada.
Appearance
The Atlantic whitefish is a coregonine fish inhabiting some freshwater lakes within Nova Scotia, Canada. Other common names that C. Huntsmani is known by are Acadian whitefish and sault whitefish. Nova Scotia prohibited the taking of Atlantic whitefish under the Canadian Fisheries Act.
Range and habitat
Earlier it was also found in the Tusket and Annis rivers of Nova Scotia. The narrowly endemic Atlantic whitefish is genetically distinct from the lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) and the cisco (Coregonus artedi), that both are widespread across much of continental North America.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Other conservation actions for the species include captive breeding and restocking, as well as control of the introduced predators. The landlocked populations feed on insects and small fish.
The geneticist Paul Bentzen leads an Atlantic whitefish captive breeding program at the Dalhousie University Aquatron.
In crisis
It is known to survive only in the Petite Rivière watershed as landlocked populations. The species was designated as an endangered species by the IUCN in 1986 and vulnerable in 1996. It is now considered critically endangered due to the consequences of dam building and introduced predators such as smallmouth bass and chain pickerel.
It has been listed as an endangered species under Schedule 1 of the Species at Risk Act since 2003.
Atlantic whitefish is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Atlantic whitefish, Wikidata item Q308870. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
