Fish Health
Fish health may be the least understood and most difficult to assess research challenges. Assessing water quality is relatively simple in comparison, but water quality alone isn’t a measure of fish health. Time and resources are required to locate and capture fish in numbers that adequately represent the aquatic or marine ecosystem as a whole, not an easy task when fish move about and are largely invisible to the human eye.
Bringing experts and those with local and indigenous knowledge together is the first step to developing an understanding of issues impacting fish. Anglers also play a key role in gathering data and reporting key observations.
To gain an understanding of the challenges facing the assessment of fish health throughout the Great Lakes Basin and Upper St. Lawrence River, Lawrence Gunther, President, Blue fish Canada, conducted stakeholder consultations involving researchers, government, industry, anglers and indigenous people. Feel free to download and share his report:
“Fish Health in the Great Lakes Basin and Upper St Lawrence River“