All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes

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All Too Clear uses cutting-edge underwater drones to explore how quadrillions of tiny invasive mussels are re-engineering the ecosystem of North America’s Great Lakes at a scale not seen since the glaciers. The mussels are trapping nutrients, the building blocks of life, on the lake bottom. Without nutrients, organisms of all kinds – from the tiniest plankton to the largest fish – are vanishing, creating vast biological deserts. While the consequences for nature and people are severe, the loss of life has had an extraordinary side effect: it’s made the lakes far clearer than they’ve ever been before. We’ve harnessed this newfound clarity to capture animal behaviours and freshwater environments that have never been filmed before.

All 3 “All Too Clear” episodes are now streaming Canada-wide on TVO Today Docs.

Standard Methods for Sampling North American Freshwater Fishes, second edition

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Standard Methods for Sampling North American Freshwater Fishes, second edition (DOI: https://doi.org/10.47886/978193487469) provides standard sampling methods recommended by the American Fisheries Society for assessing and monitoring freshwater fish populations in North America. Methods apply to ponds, reservoirs, natural lakes, and streams and rivers containing cold and warmwater fishes. Range-wide and eco-regional averages for indices of abundance, population structure, and condition for individual species are supplied to facilitate comparisons of standard data among populations. Provides information on converting nonstandard to standard data, statistical and database procedures for analyzing and storing standard data, and methods to prevent transfer of invasive species while sampling.

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Let’s Go for a Swim! Aquatic Species at Risk in Ontario, Prairies and Arctic

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Let’s Go for a Swim! Print and colour some aquatic species at risk in Ontario, Prairies and Arctic, including Grass Pickerel, Spotted Gar, Lake Sturgeon, Redside Dace, Bigmouth Buffalo, and more.

Aquatic Species at Risk Ontario, Prairies, and Arctic
The Ontario and Prairie Region of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) includes Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, while the Arctic Region includes the Yukon North Slope, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Hudson and James Bay. This boundary is inclusive of Inuit Nunangat. The purpose of Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) is to conserve, protect and recover Endangered or Threatened species, and to encourage the management of species of Special Concern to prevent them from becoming further at risk. The Act aims to prevent indigenous species from becoming extirpated or extinct and preserve biodiversity within Canada.

Not all aquatic species at risk in Canada are shown in this book. For more information, including critical habitat and distribution data for all aquatic species listed under SARA, check out DFO’s National Aquatic Species at Risk Map.

Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, 8th edition

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Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, 8th edition (DOI: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874691) provides an up-to-date checklist of common and scientific names for all described and taxonomi­cally valid fish species living in freshwaters and marine waters of North America. This eighth edition reflects taxonomic changes that have occurred since 2013 and is expanded geographically to include all species found within the exclusive economic zones of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It includes names for 5,089 species and 333 families, an increase from 3,875 species and 260 fami­lies in the seventh edition. It also provides the rationale and methodology for com­mon name allocation and history of changes from the previous edition and includes English, French, and Spanish names. The publication was compiled in collaboration with the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

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Freshwater Fisheries in Canada: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Resources and Their Management

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Canada is surrounded by three oceans and home to more freshwater lakes and rivers than can be reasonably counted. It is therefore not surprising that Canada has a plethora of freshwater fisheries and a long history of use and innovative strategies for managing them.

Freshwater Fisheries in Canada: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Resources and Their Management (https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874707) is designed to follow a logical arc beginning with an overview of the Canadian landscape and the zoogeography and status of freshwater fish populations. Next, the book brings together reports on fisheries from across Canada—either at the provincial or regional scale (as dictated largely by ecoregion; e.g., the North, the Laurentian Great Lakes). Then, a number of issues and threats are presented that are useful in revealing the challenges and opportunities that exist for ensuring that freshwater fish populations are healthy and vibrant. We conclude with some reflective contributions, including short essays from some legendary fisheries professionals in Canada as well as a forward-looking piece by some early-career fisheries professionals. Taken together, this book will serve as a resource for those interested in learning about the past, present, and future of freshwater fishes and fisheries in Canada.

To purchase a copy visit the AFS Bookstore.

Pacific Salmon Field Guide

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Pacific salmon are of immense cultural, ecological and economic importance to the west coast of North America. They are the most commonly seen fish on the western side of North America but identifying among the seven species is difficult for most of their life stages. Two salmon researchers have worked extensively in the field with this iconic group of fish and have developed the first comprehensive field identification guide for Pacific salmon in a functional format. This guide presents information and identifying characteristics for the seven Pacific salmon species—Sockeye, Coho, Chinook, Pink, Chum, Steelhead and Coastal Cutthroat—across five life stages, with strong emphasis on detailed and intuitive illustrations.

This guide is an identification resource that includes natural history, life stage descriptions and conservation status of Pacific salmon and how to observe these fish in the wild. The identification portions are organized into five life stages: fry, smolt, post smolt, ocean adult and spawner. The many scientific illustrations for each species are drawn from real specimens representative of their species and life stage. Joseph Tomelleri, who drew all the brilliant illustrations in this book, painstakingly measured every part of each fish, counting every fin ray and row of scales while layering colour upon colour. In addition, dozens of photos show these fish in incredible detail.

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Aquatic Ecosystem Classification for Ontario’s Rivers and Streams, Version 2

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The Aquatic Ecosystem Classification (AEC) is a science-based tool used to classify Ontario’s rivers and streams based on their physical attributes (e.g., water temperature, turbidity, channel slope, upstream drainage area). The AEC reduces the complexity of these vast aquatic networks in Ontario by using consistent and quantitative methods to build a standardized data foundation that helps us understand and manage streams including landscape-scale planning and policy development. At the most basic level, we hope that people can derive expectations about the nature of a stream reach or segment without having to actually visit a stream.

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Annotated Checklist of Fishes of Thunder Bay District

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This first edition of Checklist of Fishes of Thunder Bay District adds to existing checklists prepared by members of the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists (TBFN) covering other vertebrate taxa (mammals, birds, reptiles & amphibians), as well vascular plants, butterflies, and odonates. As with these other checklists, it covers the official judicial District of Thunder Bay which extends from the eastern border of Quetico Provincial Park east to White River, and from the international border north to Lake St. Joseph and the Albany River. Much of the District (60%) is within the Great Lakes watershed, with the remaining draining into the Arctic Ocean either north via the Hudson Bay Lowlands, or west via Rainy Lake/Lake of the Woods and the Nelson River watershed.

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The Lake Simcoe Aquatic Invasive Species Guide

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With an area of 722 km2 and inflow from 35 major rivers and streams, Lake Simcoe is an important source of biodiversity for the southern Ontario region.  The lake and surrounding watershed, which span across 20 municipalities, are home to a wide variety of aquatic and non-aquatic life, including 75 species of warm and coldwater fish, and many provincially rare species-at-risk.

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Invasive Aquatic Plant Species: A Quick Reference Guide

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Invasive Aquatic Plant Species: A Quick Reference Guide was compiled and written by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters Invading Species Awareness Program.  Support for the development of this guide was provided by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

This publication is available for download in PDF format.