Because of its wide geographic scope and harsh conditions, Canada's Arctic presents many challenges for researchers and biologists. In Marine Fishes of Arctic Canada, scientists from the Canadian Museum of Nature and Fisheries and Oceans Canada present a guide to the marine fishes found in Arctic Canadian waters and featuring up-to-data research on 222 species. Each of the 58 families is described in a general account followed by species accounts comprising common name, taxonomy, physical description and identification, habitat data, biology, distribution, commercial importance, and traditional knowledge. Many of the species are known only to scientists and come from the deeper waters of the Davis Strait while others have been important food sources for Indigenous peoples for millennia.
A wide-ranging general introduction looks at the history of research, fish habitats, climate, fisheries, fish structure, and the collection and preservation of fishes while an essay on traditional ecological knowledge provides an important perspective. Exquisite black-and-white drawings of each species complement colour photos and illustrations. Finally, new range maps showing distributions across Arctic Canada were created for Marine Fishes of Arctic Canada.
Marine Fishes of Arctic Canada will be a welcome reference work for Northern residents, biologists and ecologists, environmental groups, and resource extraction companies operating in the North, as well as commercial and amateur fishers in Canada and in other circumpolar countries.
"Brian W. Coad and James D. Reist have succeeded superbly in creating a most useful overview of the marine fishes in the Canadian Arctic, a treatise that will be most welcomed by ichthyologists, marine biologists, fisheries researchers, and marine biology students far beyond Canada."
– Margaret F. Docker, Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Manitoba
"Marine Fishes of Arctic Canada represents an incredible resource, and its content is excellent. It is a must-have for anyone working on marine fishes in the Canadian Arctic."
– Ingvar Byrkjedal, University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen