Climate change has already dramatically altered many inland waters through a combination of warming water, changes in phenology, and alterations to aquatic food webs. All of these forces can alter the growth, reproduction, survival, and behavior of fishes. Because these changes can influence fishes’ complex interactions with their habitat, predators, prey, and competitors, climate change can cause shifts in fish community composition that are difficult to prevent or reverse. Yet fishes also have the capacity to adapt to a changing environment through, for example, use of thermal refugia or changes in diet and habitat use. These adaptations may buffer the direct effects of climate change on fish populations, but may also involve trade-offs - e.g., thermal refugia may have few prey resources. For fish species targeted by recreational, commercial, Tribal, or subsistence fisheries, changes in fishing behaviors may further challenge our ability to understand and predict climate change impacts. For example, as many coolwater fishes face climate-driven declines in productivity, will fishers switch to targeting warmwater species and thus provide coolwater species with a compensatory reduction in fishing mortality? And how might managers encourage and leverage such stabilizing social-ecological feedbacks in order to confer greater resilience on harvested fish populations under climate change?

This session will integrate research from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives seeking to understand the impacts of climate change on inland fish and fisheries. We welcome submissions focused on all mechanisms by which climate change is altering the biology, ecology, or fisheries of inland fishes. We also welcome talks that address management of inland fisheries under climate change and the social or economic consequences of climate change impacts.

Lead Organizer: Olaf Jensen, Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin-Madison (olaf.p.jensen@gmail.com)

Co-organizers:

Ashley Trudeau, Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin-Madison (ashley.trudeau@gmail.com)

Zachary Feiner, Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (Zachary.Feiner@wisconsin.gov)

Presentations

05:30 PM

AEROBIC SCOPE OF SALMONIDS IN THE SARUFUTSU RIVER: SAKHALIN TAIMEN AND THEIR ABILITY TO ADAPT IN A WARMING WORLD (8407)

Primary Presenter: Lucas Fischer, University of Wisconsin - Madison (ljfischer2@wisc.edu)

Sakhalin taimen are an endangered species of anadromous fish in northern Japan and eastern Russia. They can take over six years to reach sexual maturity and require cold oxygenated water to survive and reproduce. This requirement makes taimen vulnerable to warming temperatures in their native ecosystem. To understand this vulnerability better, we will be conducting respirometry trials on this and other salmonids in the Sarufutsu river to establish a basal and maximum metabolic rate for these fishes across a range of temperatures. With these measurements we can calculate aerobic scope of this species and find their ideal temperature range. We will then compare it to other salmonids that live in the river system, namely white-spotted char and masu salmon.  By overlaying the aerobic scope of the different species, it is possible to understand the different temperatures that these fish are most competitive, as well as which species are going to be affected first by increasing water temperatures. We have the potential to establish the critical temperature limit of Sakhalin taimen during this project, to understand at what temperature these fish are no longer able to facilitate respiration. As water temperatures across the world increase, it is crucial to understand the range of temperatures this fish can tolerate and thrive in. Sakhalin taimen are a culturally significant fish in Hokkaido, and this research would help to provide scientific evidence of ways to conserve these fish for the future.

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