Management of Commercial Fisheries for Lake Whitefish in the Laurentian Great Lakes of North America

摘要

Lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis were an important food source to aboriginal people of North America well before the arrival of European settlers (Kinietz 1965; Cleland 1982). Archaeological records indicate that they began to exploit lake whitefish populations of the Great Lakes somewhere during 3,000-1,000 B.C.. (Cleland 1982; Spangler and Peters 1995). By 800 A.D. lake whitefish were a primary staple of aboriginal people in the upper Great Lakes and many of their villages were located adjacent to lake whitefish spawning grounds (Kinietz 1965; Cleland 1982). By the time European explorers entered the upper Great Lakes region in the early 1600s, aboriginal people had developed highly organized gill-net fisheries that targeted lake Whitefish and other species in nearshore waters (Kinietz 1965; Cleland 1982; Goodier 1989). By the late 1700s aboriginal people were selling and trading lake whitefish to European settlers in the three upper Great Lakes (Cleland 1982; Spangler and Peters 1995).