Family COREGONIDAE 



THE WHITEFISH FAMILY 



This family includes some of the most important comnu rcial food 

 fishes of the Great Lakes, such as the whitefish and the lake herring, or 

 cisco. Several million dollars' worth of these fishes are caught and sold 

 from the Great Lakes annually. 



The fishes of this family are more or less silvery in color, with blue- 

 green or pale-green backs. Most have rather long, slender gill-rakers. 

 They have a single dorsal fin with soft rays and a small dorsal adipose 

 fin, without rays, behind the dorsal fin. The mouth is small and either 

 lacks teeth or has only a few small ones. 



All members of this family are cold-water fishes and are widely dis- 

 tributed over the Northern Hemisphere. They constitute an important 

 part of the fish population of Lake Superior and the other Great Lakes. 

 They occur in many of the large, deep lakes of Canada, Minnesota, 

 Wisconsin. Michigan, New York, and New England. They are widely 

 distributed over Minnesota: tullibee or ciscoes of the genus Leucichthys 

 occur in several of the deep south central lakes, and the larger, true 

 whitefishes of the genus Coregonus occur from Mille Lacs northward. 

 As a rule the deep-bodied ciscoes, or lake herrings, of inland lakes are 

 called tullipee or tullibee. 



The characters of the various species and subspecies of the genus 

 Leucichthys are so variable that it is almost impossible to construct 

 an analytical key of the genus. Hubbs agrees with Koelz in discarding 

 several nominal species of the genus Coregonus and limiting this genus 

 in the United States to the species clwpeajormis with its several sub- 

 species. The actual status of the members of this family found in the 

 Great Lakes area is somewhat confused. More extensive studies are 

 needed, particularly of those subspecies found in inland lakes. Koelz 

 (19'27, 1931) has done much to clear up the confusion of species in Lake 

 Superior, and some of the data presented on this family have been 

 obtained from his study. 



It is well to note that as long ago as 1876 whitefish eggs taken in Lake 

 Erie produced fry that were planted in many lakes in the central coun- 

 ties of Minnesota, even as far south as Clearwater Lake, AVright County. 

 This planting may account for the presence of Coregonus in such waters 

 as Mille Lacs and Leech Lake. In 1878, to complicate matters further, 

 upward of 2,000,000 fry of the so-called tullibee hatched from eggs 

 procured from Madison, Wisconsin were liberated in the south central 

 lakes {Annual Report, Minnesota Fish Commissioners, 1878) . Plant- 

 ings were made in 1881 near the Twin Cities in White Bear Lake, Lake 

 Gervais, and Lake Minnetonka, but no fishes survived. 



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