Mark Vinson, PhD

The U.S. Geological Survey annually conducts fishery surveys across Lake Superior that describe trends in fish species occurrence and relative abundance to inform fisheries management and large lake ecology. In 2023, the Lake Superior fish community was sampled with daytime bottom and surface trawls at 51 nearshore locations in June and 31 offshore locations in July. Nearshore bottom...

In 2022, the Lake Superior fish community was sampled with daytime bottom and surface trawls at 71 nearshore locations in May-June and 35 offshore locations in July, and at 51 Coordinated Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) locations in July-October with bottom trawls, surface trawls, mid-water trawls and acoustics that were previously sampled in 2011 and 2016. Nearshore bottom...

The Lake Superior fish community within Management Unit WI-2 was sampled in July 2020 with daytime bottom trawls at 11 nearshore stations. The 11 locations sampled were long-term monitoring sites that had been annually sampled since 1974. In 2020, the number of species collected at each site ranged from 0 to 13, with a mean of 6.3 and median of six. All comparisons to 2020 results were...

The Lake Superior nearshore fish community was sampled in May-June 2021 with daytime bottom trawl tows at 45 stations located in USA waters. The 45 locations sampled were long-term monitoring sites that had been annually sampled since 1978. All comparisons to 2021 results were limited to past collections from USA waters, as compared to previous years, where comparisons included USA and...

ObjectiveThe Lake Superior Kiyi Coregonus kiyi is an understudied species being considered for reintroduction into Laurentian Great Lakes where it no longer occurs. Herein, we provide descriptions of Kiyi reproductive biology with the intention of guiding potential gamete collections for propagation.MethodsData were collected on Kiyi spawning timing, spawning locations, spawning season...

No abstract available.

Freshwater whitefishes, Salmonidae Coregoninae, are cold stenothermic fishes of ecological and socio-economic importance in northern hemisphere lakes that are warming in response to climate change. To address the effect of warming waters on coregonine reproduction we experimentally evaluated different embryo incubation temperatures on post-hatching survival, growth, and critical thermal...

Prior to European settlement, cisco (Coregonus artedi) were likely one of Lake Ontario’s most abundant fishes but currently represent a small portion of the fish community. To understand how the population has changed over the past 70 years we compared trends in annual catch rates from gillnet and bottom trawl surveys and commercial fishery landings. In surveys, cisco were generally rare...

We demonstrate, for the first time, the ability to reliably assign an assemblage of larval coregonines [Salmonidae Coregoninae] to shallow and multiple deepwater species. Larval coregonines from the Apostle Islands, Lake Superior, were genotyped using restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) and were assigned to species using reference genotypes from adult corgonines from the...

Population assessments of fish species often rely on data from surveys with different objectives, such as measuring biodiversity or community dynamics. These surveys often contain spatial–temporal dependencies that can greatly influence conclusions drawn from analyses. Pygmy whitefish (PWF, Prosopium coulterii) populations in Lake Superior were recently assessed as Threatened by the...

In 2014, 94 paired neuston net samples (0.5 mm mesh) were collected from the surface waters of Lake Superior. These samples comprise the most comprehensive surface water survey for microplastics of any of the Great Lakes to date, and the first to employ double net trawls. Microplastic abundance estimates showed wide variability, ranging between 4000 to more than 100,000 particles/km2...

Changes in winter conditions, such as decreased ice coverage and duration, have been observed in the Laurentian Great Lakes for more than 20 years. Such changes have been hypothesized to be linked to low Coregonus spp. survival to age-1 as most cisco (Coregonus artedi) populations are autumn spawners whose embryos incubate under ice throughout the winter. The quantity of light during...