Description
Downeast Salmon Federation is conducting a presence/absence survey in Hancock and Washington County in December and January to monitor tomcod (also known as frost fish). This is part of a larger citizen science project gathering information on anadromous fish species. Maine is home to 12 species of native sea-run (called diadromous) fish that spend part of their lives in freshwater and part in the sea. These fish make astounding migrations each year with significant impacts to the freshwater, estuary, and marine environments that they move through as they complete their life cycles. Because of the widespread and mobile nature of their life histories, much remains to be known about which particular coastal rivers they occupy, the timing and extent of their migrations, and the number of individuals present. Information about these fish has implications for species conservation, restoration, and management. Atlantic tomcod are one such species that migrate up rivers from the ocean to spawn in the winter. Spawning occurs in shallow brackish or fresh water over gravelly bottom. A female can deposit 6,000-30,000 eggs. Egg incubation takes up to 30 days in 30 to 43ºF water. The average adult is 9-12 in. Life expectancy is 4 years. Atlantic tomcod live in the mouths of streams or estuaries and are resistant to sudden changes in temperature and salinity. Their range is southern Labrador to Virginia. Tomcod eat larval copepods, small crustaceans, small mollusks, worms, as well as fish larvae and are eaten by predators such as Striped Bass and Bluefish. Atlantic tomcod populations have declined due to loss of access to spawning grounds, overfishing, and exposure to toxins. Because they typically live year-round in estuaries, tomcod are particularly subject to stresses from pollutants. Since the commercial fishery closed in the 1950s, there is very little known about their current whereabouts or how well they are doing in Maine rivers and streams. We need to learn more about these amazing creatures to better manage our rivers and streams now and into the future. Information collected by this project is designed to create a more complete picture of where, when, and in what numbers tomcod can be found.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 84 records.
1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is The Community Environmental Health Laboratory at MDI Biological Laboratory. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: f3c378aa-92c4-47f2-b718-c9520872ebf2. The Community Environmental Health Laboratory at MDI Biological Laboratory publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.
Keywords
Occurrence
Contacts
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
http://orcid.org/https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4869-9802
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- User ●
- Point Of Contact
- Point Of Contact
Geographic Coverage
Downeast Maine, United States
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [44.323, -68.506], North East [44.955, -67.104] |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2009-12-04 / 2020-01-25 |
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Project Data
Anecdata is a free online citizen science platform developed by the Community Lab at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Anecdata is used by hundreds of individuals and organizations to gather and access citizen science observations and provides a platform to easily collect, manage, and share their citizen science data. How Anecdata works: Project managers create projects, creating datasheets that participants fill out to share their observations. Participants join projects and use the Anecdata website or mobile app to share their observations with the project. Project data is now available for anyone to view and download!
| Title | Anecdata.org |
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| Identifier | Anecdata.org |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Principal Investigator
- Curator
Sampling Methods
Maine is home to 12 species of native sea-run (called diadromous) fish that spend part of their lives in freshwater and part in the sea. These fish make astounding migrations each year with significant impacts to the freshwater, estuary, and marine environments that they move through as they complete their life cycles. Because of the widespread and mobile nature of their life histories, much remains to be known about which particular coastal rivers they occupy, the timing and extent of their migrations, and the number of individuals present. Information about these fish has implications for species conservation, restoration, and management. Atlantic tomcod are one such species that migrate up rivers from the ocean to spawn in the winter. Spawning occurs in shallow brackish or fresh water over gravelly bottom. A female can deposit 6,000-30,000 eggs. Egg incubation takes up to 30 days in 30 to 43ºF water. The average adult is 9-12 in. Life expectancy is 4 years. Atlantic tomcod live in the mouths of streams or estuaries and are resistant to sudden changes in temperature and salinity. Their range is southern Labrador to Virginia. Tomcod eat larval copepods, small crustaceans, small mollusks, worms, as well as fish larvae and are eaten by predators such as Striped Bass and Bluefish. Atlantic tomcod populations have declined due to loss of access to spawning grounds, overfishing, and exposure to toxins. Because they typically live year-round in estuaries, tomcod are particularly subject to stresses from pollutants. Since the commercial fishery closed in the 1950s, there is very little known about their current whereabouts or how well they are doing in Maine rivers and streams. We need to learn more about these amazing creatures to better manage our rivers and streams now and into the future. Information collected by this project is designed to create a more complete picture of where, when, and in what numbers tomcod can be found.
| Study Extent | Downeast Salmon Federation is conducting a presence/absence survey in Hancock and Washington County in December and January to monitor tomcod (also known as frost fish). This is part of a larger citizen science project gathering information on anadromous fish species. Project Goal: Determine the presence and absence of Microgadus tomcod in Downeast Maine. |
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Method step description:
- Participants will visually identify Microgadus tomcod sign, including fish and bird activity.
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | f3c378aa-92c4-47f2-b718-c9520872ebf2 |
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| https://doi.org/10.15468/sq6w35 | |
| https://bison.usgs.gov/ipt/resource?r=tomcod |