Fishes of the Last Frontier: Life Histories, Biology, Ecology, and Management of Alaska's Fishes

2011

Fish

ALASKA’S FISHES

Let’s start with some basic background information about fish. First, a simple question. What is a fish? Just how do we define this critter that we will be talking about? Our use of the word fish is actually a convenient way to group together a widely diverse collection of organisms.

The word fish, itself, can be confusing. In one context, it is a word that generally refers to these organisms. The plural is either fish or fishes. In another context, the word fish refers to a one or more individuals in a particular species and the word fishes refers to a grouping of two or more species.

Fish can be very broadly defined as animals having a vertebral column, live in water, are cold-blooded, move by fin action, and use gills to obtain oxygen dissolved in water. The key word in the previous sentence is broadly. Some fish species, such as mudskippers, found in tropical and subtropical intertidal areas, are amphibious, forage out of water, and are capable of wriggling up slanted woody stems with their modified pectoral fins. Some fish, such as tunas and some sharks, in fact, are warm blooded. The Chinese fish called swamp eel have virtually no fins as adults. This makes them better adapted for burrowing. Despite their name, they live in habitats where they survive periodic droughts by breathing air. Hagfishes have no fins at all. Some species, such as lungfishes, have primitive lungs and can obtain oxygen from atmospheric air.

Throughout this book, words like usually and typically are used often because there are many exceptions to the norm when we are talking about fish and almost any species may have populations with different lifestyles that are adapted to different habitats. I usually prefer to talk about the most common lifestyles of fishes while some of my colleagues delight in focusing on the exceptions, the unique characteristics, or the features found on the tails of a bellshaped curve. I will try to point out as many exceptions to a rule as I can.

There is a total of about 24,000 species of fish in the world that are arranged in a classification system according to their evolutionary history and relationships to each other. Each has been studied by scientists, its unique features are described, and a unique name has been assigned. The scientific classification system is just that. Organisms are classified in a series of more and more specific ranks leading to the family level that includes similar genera. Within each genus, there is one or more related species, the lowest level of identification, or taxon. North American fish species have been studied by taxonomists and the American Fisheries Society has established an accepted common name for each species. Note that it is very important for scientists to assure that when they communicate about a particular fish, they are talking about the same fish, but it is okay if the name you know and use for a particular fish may not agree with the one that scientists use. Scientists who study fish are ichthyologists and scientists who study names of organisms are taxonomists.

We can say, however, that all vertebrates have an internal skeleton that provides a framework for muscle attachment and body form. There two important groupings of fish: those with a skeleton composed of cartilage and those with a skeleton of calcified bones. Cartilaginous fishes, such as sharks and skates, are evolutionarily older and more primitive than the bony fishes, represented, for example, by rockfish, salmon, or herring.

Where do we find fish? Some fishes are found only in freshwater and other species survive only in salt water because these two environments are very different environments and affect organisms in very different ways.

Freshwater environments are on the continents and eventually drain into the seas. Estuaries are the mixing zones where the freshwater and the salt water merge and blend. Water in these mixing zones is called brackish. Some saltwater fish and some freshwater fish can also survive in the brackish waters depending on the salt content of the water. Estuaries are important in the lives of many fishes because this is a fertile environment and they serve as nursery grounds for many different species. A very small proportion of all fishes are adapted to migrate between salt water and freshwater to complete different parts of their life cycles. These fish are diadromous. They have the capability to survive the challenging transition between salt water and freshwater.

Different species of fish occupy different zones in any of these environments. Some fish, such as sticklebacks, live in shallow waters around lake or ocean margins. This zone is called littoral. Open-water zones, occupied by free-swimming fish, such as Pacific herring, are called pelagic. Deep-water zones, where flatfishes, such as halibut, thrive are called benthic. Organisms that live in this zone are called demersal.

Some fish, such as yellow perch, are typically found only in lakes or ponds. Others, such as freshwater sculpins, are commonly found in streams or rivers.

How do fish change during their life? All organisms go through a cycle from birth to death. A generalized life cycle for most fish usually starts with mating of a male and female to produce a fertilized egg where an embryo develops until it hatches as a larva-like organism. Most larval fish are quite small and transparent with little or no pigment. Larval fish grow, accumulate pigment, and transform into a juvenile life stage called a fry or fingerling. These grow to become sub-adults until they reach maturity and complete the cycle by spawning. Each life stage usually has separate habitat requirements.

What does all this mean? There are many different species of fish because there are so many different environments and habitats and fishes have adapted to take advantage of the different opportunities. Many environments where fish live blend together in a continuous, changing gradient and different fishes are uniquely adapted to survive in different parts of these different environments that accommodate the different life stages. The following chapters discuss life histories and habitat needs of selected fishes of Alaska.

Reference: Helfman et al., 1997.

ARCTIC LAMPREY

Lampetra camtschatica

FISH FACTS

Lamprey Family, Petromyzontidae

Freshwater, Anadromous

Spawn as pairs, in redd, die after spawning

Parasitic on other fish

Subsistence, small Commercial Fisheries

"It’s eel season on the Yukon River. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of the squiggly, squirmy creatures are swimming up from the Bering Sea, a seething mass wriggling quietly beneath the river ice to spawn and die. Like salmon, except for the mystery posed by winter’s icy cover." This came from an article by Joel Gay in the Anchorage Daily News entitled Eels under Yukon ice turn into cash for villagers, November 30, 2003.

But wait—although eels may squiggle and squirm, there are no eels in the Yukon River. So what is going on here?

The article continues, When the eels—Arctic lampreys, to be precise— pass through a village, fishermen rush to the river to dip their nets and ‘eel sticks’ through holes in the ice, pulling the fish out by the hundreds. Baked or canned, eels are considered a rich delicacy.

Arctic lamprey mouth, Yukon River, 2003

Photo by Randy Brown, USFWS

Ah ha. Lampreys, not eels. Okay, what is the difference between a lamprey and an eel? And what is a lamprey eel? The last question is the easiest because there is no such thing. People often use the term lamprey eel when they are referring to a lamprey. There are fishes named lamprey and fishes named eel but there is no lamprey eel. Each name is the designation for one of two very distinct types of fishes. Lampreys, however, are often mistaken for eels because both lampreys and eels have long, slender, cylindrical bodies.

Lampreys are ancient fishes. They have been around some 500 million years and they are still with us today. A lamprey is a primitive, jawless fish. Its mouth is a round, sucking disk rimmed with small, tough, toothlike structures. They have no other hard body parts.

An eel has a bony skeleton, fine scales, and a full set of fins, jaws, and gills with one gill opening. Most fishes, including eels, have a mouth formed by hinged upper and lower jaws that open and close. Lampreys and another group of cartilaginous fish, hagfish, have a mouth opening but do not have jaws. A lamprey mouth opening is circular and is tilted downward. It functions, in part, like a suction cup. Lampreys do not have a bony skeleton, or scales, or jaws. They do have gills, but each gill arch has its own porelike opening that is displayed as a series of seven pores along the frontal part of their bodies.

Lampreys come in two versions, anadromous and freshwater. There are about 40 species worldwide, mostly in the northern hemisphere. There are 20 species of lampreys in North America, of which 5 are found in Alaska waters. Of these, the Arctic lamprey and Pacific lamprey may be the best known because they are anadromous, big, and visible. These species are parasitic on other marine fishes. Nonanadromous lampreys are limited to freshwater, where they are smaller in size and more inconspicuous.

Arctic lampreys, in Alaska, are distributed from the Arctic coast in the north, and south to include the Yukon River, Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, and Kenai Peninsula. The Pacific lamprey distribution overlaps and extends farther south. The Arctic lamprey is found nearly worldwide in northern waters. This fish is typically anadromous but it may have freshwater and nonanadromous forms as well.

Arctic lampreys spawn in the spring in flowing waters over a gravelly bottom. The upstream migration is mainly at night. Males and females work together to excavate a nest or redd. They fan away fine materials with their fins and use their mouths to move stones one at a time. A lamprey grasps and lifts a stone, waves its tail, and uses the current to drift downstream before dropping the stone. They can also use their sucker mouths to attach to a wet surface, such as a rock, if they need to rest in fast water. In spawning, the male uses his sucker to grasp the head of the female and wrap his body around hers and they simultaneously release eggs and sperm. The fertilized eggs sink to the gravel and are not buried. After spawning, the adults die.

Development and hatching requires several weeks. The larva, or ammocoete, looks quite different from adults. They do not have eyes or the disk-like mouths of their parents. Instead, they have a small gland on their heads to detect the presence or absence of light, and a small funnel-shaped mouth with no teeth. They burrow into the silt and mud of shallow pools and backwaters of rivers and sloughs and filter microorganisms and organic matter from the sediment. Ammocoetes remain in freshwater for 1 and possibly 2 years to as many as 8 years before metamorphosing into adults. During this rearing period in freshwater, a myriad of other animals feed on juvenile lampreys including river otters and many birds. Fish, such as burbot, inconnu, and northern pike, also feed on the ammocoetes.

Metamorphosis to the adult form is probably in late summer and migration to the ocean begins. Arctic lampreys are parasitic on other fish and this is when the suction mouth comes in handy again. They use suction to attach themselves on their host fish and they use their flat tongue with its rough rasp-like surface to scrape through the skin so they can suck the body fluids from the other fish. As the lamprey grows, it detaches and transfers to a larger fish. Their marine lifespan, apparently, is about 1 to 4 years before they migrate back to freshwater.

Arctic lampreys are typically about 15 inches in length, but 24-inch-long individuals have been reported. Some may be up to 2 inches in diameter.

Apparently, some Arctic lamprey populations complete their life cycle entirely in freshwater. These appear to be nonparasitic and individuals rarely exceed 7 inches in length. Nonanadromous lampreys in Alaska waters are small, about 6 inches in length. Nonparasitic lampreys exist primarily in the ammocoetes life stage. These lampreys often live in areas of soft bottom and most filter stream bottom materials for the nutrients they find there. Adults have a nonfunctional gut and do not feed. The ammocoetes life stage may be 8 years long and the adult stage less than a year.

How are Arctic lampreys of interest to Alaskans? The newspaper article says most of it. Subsistence fisheries use this oily, protein-rich fish as food for dogs and humans. Some commercial fisheries may operate and in parts of Asia, lamprey meat is considered a delicacy and will fetch a higher price per pound than salmon. Apparently, some anglers dig through the mud for ammocoetes to use as burbot bait. On the Yukon River, people use chainsaws to cut holes through the ice to catch the migrating lampreys with dip nets or an eel rake made from a spruce pole with a row of pointed nails sticking through at one end. The rake is used to impale the fish. The meat of an Arctic lamprey is extremely rich and oily. People eat lampreys and also feed them to their sled dogs.

Lampreys are different from eels in another way. There are more than 600 species of eels. Nearly all are marine but the American eel is found in Atlantic Ocean coastal watersheds. Pacific and Arctic lampreys are anadromous. American eels are catadromous— just the opposite from anadromous. Mature, adult American eels migrate from freshwater to spawn in the Sargasso Sea in the southcentral region of the North Atlantic Ocean. The feeble, larval American eels, called leptocephalus larva, migrate—actually, they drift—westerly, then northerly in the Gulf Stream until they encounter a river mouth and migrate upstream, where they grow and mature before they return to the ocean to spawn and die.

Lampreys may be considered to be a primitive fish but there is not much about this fish that is simple.

REFERENCES:Morrow, 1980; Mecklenburg et al., 2002;

Paxton and Eschmeyer, 1994.

SALMON SHARK

Lamna ditropis

FISH FACTS

Mackerel Shark Family, Lamnidae

Marine, Pelagic

Piscivorous

Internal fertilization, young are born live

Small sport fishery

Sharks are interesting fishes, in part because they are different from most other fishes. Sharks evolved much earlier than most other fishes. Their skeletons are cartilaginous, and they do not possess a swim bladder. Most species must swim continuously so they will not sink, and they use their pectoral fins much like air-plane wings to create lift while swimming. Sharks have a separate gill opening for each gill arch. Fertilization is internal and males use a pair of organs called claspers to insert sperm into the female. Claspers developed from a modified pelvic fin.

Fewer than half of the sharks lay eggs but eggs that are laid are enclosed in a tough horny case called a mermaid’s purse. Most sharks bear live young. Among most of those that bear live young, the embryo is retained in the female’s uterus until the yolk sac is used up. Gestation may be up to 12 months. In most, a relatively small number of large young are produced.

There are 10 species of sharks known or presumed to swim in Alaska waters. Of these, the salmon shark, Pacific sleeper shark, and spiny dogfish are the most common. In Alaska, salmon sharks are found throughout state waters. Worldwide, they are found throughout the North Pacific and occur as far south as Baja, Mexico and even Central America. They are most abundant, however, from the Gulf of Alaska to Central California.

The salmon shark is a big fish. Some individuals may attain a total length (TL) of 9 feet and weigh nearly 450 pounds. They are top level predators and get big on a diet of fish, such as salmon, herring, sablefish, cods, rockfish, eulachon, and flatfish. They also consume a lot of invertebrates including several kinds of squid and octopus.

In Alaska, other members of the salmon shark family, Lamnidae, include the white shark and rarer shortfin mako sharks. Members of this family and another family of sharks have the remarkable ability to maintain body temperatures that are higher than water temperature. These fishes are warmblooded, or endothermic. Endothermic sharks have a modified blood circulatory system with a counter current heat exchanger called retia mirabilia that retains heat generated by swimming activity, transfers it from warm blood headed back to the gills to the blood coming into the body from the gills, so little heat is lost to the surrounding water via the gills and diffusion through the body wall. Salmon shark core temperature is a relatively constant 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

Why is this important? Warm muscles contract faster and give the endothermic fishes, also including tunas, greater swimming speed and agility, which make them more effective predators of swift, fast-moving prey in cold-water environments.

Mating for salmon sharks is believed to occur in late summer to early fall. Gestation is estimated to be about 9 months. The reproductive mode of salmon sharks is aplacental viviparity, commonly referred to as ovoviviparous, which means that the young shark hatches from the egg while in the female’s uterus and the embryo absorbs its yolk sac. After the yolk sac has been absorbed, the developing shark consumes unfertilized eggs that are produced by the female until near the time of birth. This process is called oophagy, which literally means egg eating.

Female salmon sharks in the eastern North Pacific mature between 6 and 9 years of age and nearly 7 feet in total length. Males are believed to become mature between 3 and 5 years old and about 5 feet in total length. Salmon sharks live to at least 40 years of age. Salmon sharks are born in the spring at a size of about 3 feet in a region from southeast Alaska to Baja California, Mexico. Litter size is probably about 5 pups. After a year of growth, pups are approximately 4 feet in length. As they approach maturity, they move north to places like the Gulf of Alaska and the Sea of Okhotsk.

At times, salmon sharks can accumulate in large feeding aggregations. One report by the NOAA Fisheries Office at the Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau noted that large aggregations of salmon sharks began to be observed by biologists in Prince William Sound in the 1990s. Often, these were associated in time and space with the large aggregations of coho, pink and chum salmon.

Energy from feeding forays is stored in the salmon shark’s liver which is huge and fills a large part of their body cavity. The stored energy is fuel for growth, reproduction and migrations. Some salmon sharks make long migrations along the United States west coast and in the open North Pacific. One was reported to travel from Shelikof Strait to Southern California. More than 2,000 miles in 37 days.

Why is the salmon shark interesting for Alaskans? They are not targeted by commercial fisheries, but sport anglers enjoy the challenge of catching a big, strong, and powerful fish and they are occasionally taken by subsistence users. Some people are not happy that they are predators on returning salmon.

Although salmon sharks are relatively big, the largest fish in the world today is the whale shark. These proverbial gentle giants feed on plankton and may attain a length of about 39 feet and weigh about 26,000 pounds. The greatest recorded weight for a whale shark is 74,800 pounds, or nearly 38 tons. Whale sharks are found worldwide in warmer ocean waters. The largest shark reported from Alaska waters, though rarely, is the basking shark which may reach a length of about 32 feet.

REFERENCES:AFSC, NMFS website; Goldman and Musick, 2006; Mecklenburg et al., 2002; FishBase website; additional comments by Dr. K. Goldman.

LONGNOSE SKATE

Raja rhina

FISH FACTS

Skate Family, Rajidae

Marine, Demersal

Feed on benthic invertebrates and small fish

Internal fertilization, egg cases

No directed fishery

Skates are close relatives to sharks; in fact, skates are much like flattened, spread-out sharks. There are about 280 species of skates worldwide, but as a group, they have not been widely studied. At least 14 species have been verified to live in Alaska waters. Skates are designed for life on the sea bottom. From above, skates are usually squarish or kite-like in shape with a slender, tapered tail. Alaska species have two small dorsal fins near the tip of the tail. Some species have one dorsal fin and some have none. The body occupies a narrow middle section of the main disk, and the wings are actually modified pectoral fins that are used for propulsion. A wave is propagated from the anterior and ripples along the fin to create forward motion. The mouth and gill openings are on the bottom side.

As with sharks, fertilization is internal. Males use a pair of organs called claspers to insert sperm into the genital opening of the female. A clasper is a modified pelvic fin. Skates do not bear live young but lay eggs that are large and enclosed in a tough-skinned case with elongated horns that extend from each of the four corners. Internal fertilization with egg laying is called oviparous.

The longnose skate is distributed in nearshore Alaska coastal waters from the Alaska Peninsula and along the coast south to Baja California and the Gulf of California, but they are not found around the Aleutian Islands. They are usually found in depths of about 65 to 2,000 feet, but more commonly in inshore waters to 1,000 feet deep. Longnose skates usually partially or fully bury themselves in sandy or muddy bottoms. As they settle to the bottom, they flutter their pectoral fins to stir the materials that settle over their bodies.

The longnose skate is one of several large skates in Alaska waters. They may be as long as about 6 feet in length. Longnose skates become mature at about 9 to 12 years of age and a size of about 3½ feet. They may live to an age of about 26 years. Apparently, they have no particular spawning season.

Food habits of skates are not well known but it has been reported that big skates, a species closely related to longnose skates, feed on benthic organisms, particularly crabs and small fishes, such as sand lance. Big skates apparently are prey for some sharks.

Fertilization by the male big skate, and probably the longnose skate as well, is accomplished during a mating embrace. Gestation lasts about a year. Egg capsules, which are oblong with pointed horns, are deposited in sand or muddy flat areas where the embryo utilizes the yolk to develop. Longnose skate egg cases are about 4 inches in length. Big skate egg cases are larger than those of any other skate—more than 10 inches long, and big skates are one of only two species of skate in the world that have multiple embryos per egg case. Longnose skates are