The longjaw cisco (''Coregonus alpenae'') was a deep-water

cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

or chub, usually caught at depths of 100 metres () or more from Lakes

Huron Huron may refer to: People * Wyandot people (or Wendat), indigenous to North America * Wyandot language, spoken by them * Huron-Wendat Nation, a Huron-Wendat First Nation with a community in Wendake, Quebec * Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, and

Erie Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...

. Its Latin name was derived from Alpena, a city in Michigan. Silver colored and growing to a maximum length of about 30 centimeters (12 inches) long, the extinction of longjaw cisco was a result of

overfishing Overfishing is the removal of a species of fish (i.e. fishing) from a body of water at a rate greater than that the species can replenish its population naturally (i.e. the overexploitation of the fishery's existing fish stock), resulting in th ...

pollution Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...

of the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

and the disruption of Great Lakes

food chains A food chain is a linear network of links in a food web starting from producer organisms (such as grass or algae which produce their own food via photosynthesis) and ending at an apex predator species (like grizzly bears or killer whales), de ...

after the introduction of the

sea lamprey The sea lamprey (''Petromyzon marinus'') is a parasitic lamprey native to the Northern Hemisphere. It is sometimes referred to as the "vampire fish". Description The sea lamprey has an eel-like body without paired fins. Its mouth is jawless, ro ...

. The systematics of the group of fishes called "ciscoes" is complicated and scientists now generally believe that the longjaw cisco was not a separate species, but a distinctive population of large-bodied individuals of

shortjaw cisco The shortjaw cisco (''Coregonus zenithicus'') is a North-American freshwater whitefish in the salmon family. Adult fish range to about in length and are silver, tinged with green above and paler below. One of the members of the broader ''Core ...

(''Coregonus zenithicus''). The deepwater cisco fishery caught longjaw ciscoes and sold them as "smoked

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

". The commercial catch peaked around the 1930s when about one-third of the catch of ciscoes was this species. No individuals have been reported in commercial fish catches since 1967, and in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

the last individual was recorded from

Georgian Bay Georgian Bay (french: Baie Georgienne) is a large bay of Lake Huron, in the Laurentia bioregion. It is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. The main body of the bay lies east of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. To ...

in 1975.

References

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q309124 Cold water fish Fish of North America becoming extinct since 1500 Coregonus Extinct animals of the United States Fish described in 1924 Taxa named by Walter Koelz