Longjaw cisco

The longjaw cisco (Coregonus alpenae) was a deep-water cisco or chub, usually caught at depths of 100 metres (328 ft) or more from Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Erie. Its Latin name was derived from Alpena, a city in Michigan. Silver colored and growing to a maximum length of about 30 centimeters (12 inches) long, the extinction of longjaw cisco was a result of overfishing, pollution of the Great Lakes and the disruption of Great Lakes food chains after the introduction of the sea lamprey.^[4]

Longjaw cisco
Conservation status
Extinct (1978)  (IUCN 2.3)[1]
Extinct (1978) (ESA)[2][3][4]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Salmoniformes
Family:	Salmonidae
Genus:	Coregonus
Species:	†C. alpenae
Binomial name
†Coregonus alpenae Koelz, 1924

The systematics of the group of fishes called "ciscoes" is complicated and scientists now generally believe that the longjaw cisco was not a separate species, but a distinctive population of large-bodied individuals of shortjaw cisco (Coregonus zenithicus).^{[citation needed]}

The deepwater cisco fishery caught longjaw ciscoes and sold them as "smoked herring". The commercial catch peaked around the 1930s when about one-third of the catch of ciscoes was this species.^{[citation needed]}

No individuals have been reported in commercial fish catches since 1967, and in Ontario the last individual was recorded from Georgian Bay in 1975.^{[citation needed]}