by Paige Jessup, Climate Resilience Intern

Freshwater fish are diverse and an important part of our economy. Not only are fish an important food source to people around the world but they are also important to our economies, providing jobs to over 60 million people (Orr, 2021). Fish are also an important part of our freshwater ecosystem; they contribute to the food chain by consuming other aquatic organisms, such as invertebrates and smaller fish, and they are also food for other predators. 

Today, one-third of all freshwater species are threatened with extinction (Orr, 2021). The majority of the issues affecting fish populations are human-driven activities, such as overfishing, climate change, pollution, habitat damage, and the spread of parasites and disease. This then makes it our responsibility to change things. Watersheds Canada has a collection of the following five webinars which will introduce you to some of the different efforts being made to conserve our freshwater fish species. This includes everything from new technologies being developed for monitoring to best practices for shoreline property owners. Once you are equipped with these webinars, you will be able to take local action for fish populations.

You can find many other webinars besides these five on our Freshwater Stewardship Community page. The webinars cover a widespread of topics and are free to watch and share at any time.

Webinar #1: “Fishing Through a Lens: Using Underwater Cameras to Detect Freshwater Fishes” with Dr. Rowshyra Castañeda

In this webinar, Dr. Rowshyra Catañeda of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, will discuss the research behind the use of underwater cameras in freshwater systems and describe how to use this method in local waterbodies.

Local fish communities can be great indicators of water quality and ecosystem health. However, conventional fishing methods, such as netting or trapping, require training and permitting, making it difficult to rapidly assess the fish community in a local water body. Additionally, physical handling of fishes is necessary for these methods, which can cause undue harm and stress to the fishes. Instead of using these methods, there are more novel sampling ones like the use of underwater cameras. This method is a great alternative to conventional sampling methods because it is non-invasive. 

This webinar walks through a study that was done to monitor the Redside Dace (Clinostomus elongatus), an important Species at Risk. The study was done in the watersheds that connect to Lake Ontario and uses both conventional sampling methods and underwater cameras to compare their effectiveness. The study shows that underwater cameras can be just as effective as convention sampling methods. The second part of this study looked at underwater cameras compared to other novel methods such as eDNA and snorkelling. The results show that underwater cameras have a high detection probability. There are some factors that should be taken into account when using underwater cameras for monitoring such as, the turbidity of the water and how many cameras are being used (as more cameras yield better results). 

 

Webinar #2: “Creating Healthy, Natural Habitats for Freshwater Fish: How community groups can help local lake trout, walleye, brook trout, bass, pike, and perch” with Melissa Dakers

In this webinar, Melissa Dakers of Watersheds Canada, provides an understanding of the biological needs of common freshwater fish species in Ontario and the threats that they are currently facing. She also provides examples of past projects and free tools so you can take action on your own. 

Ontario is home to over 155 species of freshwater fish, including some of the more common families like the perch, sunfish, pike, and trout. Some of the common threats to these freshwater fish include invasive species, pollution, overfishing, loss of habitat, and climate change. There are things that you as an individual or as a community can do to help improve the local fish populations, such as curving your pathways so pollutants do not run straight into water, leaving any trees or woody-debris that falls into the water, and planting native vegetation to prevent erosion and to filter runoff. This vegetation also provides food and shade to fish and wildlife. 

The Fish Habitat Enhancement Toolkit provides community groups with step-by-step instructions and a tutorial video on how to successfully deliver a fish habitat enhancement project. Some of the different fish habitat restoration projects that Watersheds Canada has been involved in include: cold-water creek enhancements, in-water brush piles, walleye spawning bed enhancements, and trout spawning bed enhancements. Some steps to completing a successful fish habitat project are: gathering fisheries information, consulting stakeholders for hands-on help, determining your objective, choosing your project site, planning your project, obtaining permits, funding your project, and communicating your project to the community and partners. 

 

Webinar #3: “Can Ontario’s Brook Trout Cope with Climate Change?” with Erin Stewart

In this webinar, Erin Stewart of the Integrative Fish Ecology Lab at Trent University, talks about the impacts of climate change on brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and how the loss of cold-water streams and lake habitat puts brook trout, a native cold-water specialist, at risk. 

Brook trout are known as a cold-water fish species and are native to Ontario. However, brook trout are extremely thermally tolerant as they can survive the frigid northern temperatures, and they can also live in streams reaching temperatures upwards of 20 degrees Celsius. Even though these fish are extremely tolerant, climate change is happening faster than they are able to adapt. 

There are four coping mechanisms being looked at to answer the question, “can brook trout cope with climate change”. The first is acclimation and how well they are adjusting to the temperature. Next is behavioural changes like how an individual fish is going to change its behaviour daily or seasonally to adjust to changing temperatures. Thirdly, if they change their migration to suitable habitats is considered. Finally, how quickly they are able to adapt over generations will ultimately determine if they can cope with climate change. However, brook trout have very different abilities to cope based on a number of things, so in order to answer this question, specific evidence-based information is needed. This could include more information about life stages, seasons, populations, or regions. 

 

Webinar #4: “Enhancing and Restoring Critical Fish Habitat in Ontario” with Melissa Dakers

In this webinar, Melissa Dakers of Watersheds Canada will provide information and resources for community groups across Ontario to restore and enhance their local in-water fish habitat. Primarily, the webinar focuses on the free Fish Habitat Enhancement Toolkit which includes step-by-step protocols and videos on how to successfully complete a fish habitat enhancement project. This toolkit provides protocols on cold-water creek enhancement, in-water brush piles, and walleye spawning bed enhancement.

Secondly, the webinar discusses the Pugnose Shiner Landowner Engagement and Shoreline Habitat Restoration Project delivered on West Lake, East Lake, and Wellers Bay in Ontario. The objectives of this project were to educate shoreline property owners on how they can take actions on their land to protect the Pugnose Shiner (Notropis anogenus), a Species at Risk. The activities for this project included carrying out shoreline property assessments, conducting shoreline restoration on properties, completing invasive aquatic vegetation surveys, and developing communication materials to educate shoreline property owners on stewardship actions they can take to restore habitat for the Pugnose Shiner. 

This presentation will also take you through a few of the different programs Watersheds Canada has developed. Love Your Lake is a shoreline assessment and educational stewardship program that looks at the different aspects of a waterfront property and see how the actions on land and in-water contribute to the health of the lake. The program gives landowners a personalized, confidential, and non-regulatory report with details on the state of their shoreline and recommended actions they can take for improving lake health. Another program that is covered is The Natural Edge, a shoreline naturalization program that is designed to help landowners, community associations, and municipalities create a natural shoreline by planting native species of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. The objective of both of these programs are to protect shoreland areas as these areas are vital to aquatic and terrestrial species. 

 

Webinar #5: “Life in the ‘Weeds’: Exploring the rarely seen world of aquatic plants” with Dr. Jo Latimore

In this webinar, Dr. Jo Latimore of the Michigan State University’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife will take you through the different types of aquatic vegetation, their importance, and how you can identify them in your own backyard. There is both beauty and importance to be found in aquatic plants. 

Aquatic plants are categorized into three types: emergent, floating, and subversive. Emergent plants are ones that stick up out of the water. Some common emergent plants include hard-stem bulrush, broad-leaf cattail, arrowhead, and spikerush. Floating plants have leaves that float on the surface of the water, which includes yellow and white water lilies, water shield, and floating leaf pondweed. Finally there are subversive plants that live underneath the water like pondweeds, milfoils, bladderworts, and macroalgae. There are many benefits to keeping these plants around including: absorbing wave energy, providing habitat for fish, providing oxygen, and cycling nutrients which prevents overproduction of algae and improves water quality. 

There are a few basic identification features for plants that you should be looking at when trying to identify plants like leaf type, arrangement, attachment, number of veins, the mid veins, and the apex. In this presentation you will taken through some of the different common aquatic plants and learn some of their key features in order to identify them in your area. 

There are some things you can do on your shoreline property or when visiting the lake to protect these important native plants, like reducing disturbance and removal of these plants, avoiding hardening your shoreline and keeping it as natural as possible, and managing invasive species so they do not push out native species. 

 

Additional Resources

• “Fishing Through a Lens: Using Underwater Cameras to Detect Freshwater Fishes” accompanying webinar handout
• “Creating Healthy, Natural Habitats for Freshwater Fish: How community groups can help local lake trout, walleye, brook trout, bass, pike, and perch” accompanying webinar handout
• “Can Ontario’s Brook Trout Cope with Climate Change?” accompanying webinar handout 
• “Enhancing and Restoring Critical Fish Habitat in Ontario” accompanying webinar handout
• “Life in the ‘Weeds’: Exploring the rarely seen world of aquatic plants” accompanying webinar handout 

References 

Orr, S. (2021, March 15). We cannot afford to overlook the importance of freshwater fish. Dialogue Earth. Retrieved from https://dialogue.earth/en/nature/we-cannot-afford-to-overlook-freshwater-fish

 

This blog post is part of a series generously funding by the Government of Canada’s EcoAction Community Funding Program, and a project delivered in partnership with Crowe Valley Conservation Authority.