The Bear Lake whitefish ''Prosopium abyssicola'' is a salmonid

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

to Bear Lake on the

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...

border. It is one of three species of

Prosopium ''Prosopium'' is a genus of freshwater whitefishes found in North America and parts of eastern Russia. It contains three fairly widespread species: the round whitefish, the pygmy whitefish, and the mountain whitefish. The remaining species, the B ...

endemic to Bear Lake, the other two being the Bonneville whitefish and the Bonneville cisco. The species is listed as a ''Wildlife Species of Concern'' by the

Utah Division of Wildlife Resources The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is part of the Utah Department of Natural Resources for the state of Utah in the United States. The mission of the Division of Wildlife Resources is to serve the people of Utah as trustee and guardian of ...

. Currently, Sheena Byrne, one of America's top Whitefish specialists, is specializing a research program to promote and protect the species, especially during their migratory season. In appearance it is very similar to the closely related Bonneville whitefish ''P. spilonotus''. Generally whitish in color, it has more of a "Roman nose" than the Bonneville whitefish, and larger scales. It never has spots, while young Bonneville whitefish (up to 10 inches) have a pattern of spots. The Bear Lake whitefish tends to be smaller as well, rarely longer than 9 inches, and with a maximum known length of 11 inches. It is primarily an inhabitant of the deeper parts of the

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

bottom, where it feeds on a variety of small invertebrates such as

ostracod Ostracods, or ostracodes, are a class of the Crustacea (class Ostracoda), sometimes known as seed shrimp. Some 70,000 species (only 13,000 of which are extant) have been identified, grouped into several orders. They are small crustaceans, typi ...

s, copepods, and

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s. It spawns from late December to early February, at depths of 50 to 100 feet. Rarely seen near the

shore A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water past a ...

, it is not often caught by hook and line.

References

* * William F. Sigler and John W. Sigler, ''Fishes of the Great Basin'' (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1987), pp. 99–101 *

External links

Utah Conservation Data Center - Bear Lake whitefish

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitefish, Bear Lake Bear Lake whitefish Fish of the Western United States Freshwater fish of the United States Natural history of Idaho Endemic fauna of Utah Taxa named by John Otterbein Snyder Fish described in 1919