Welcome to the USGS Fisheries: Aquatic and Endangered Resources Program
The Fisheries: Aquatic and Endangered Resources Program (FAER) focuses on the study of aquatic organisms and aquatic habitats. Aquatic invertebrates, mussels, fishes, and their unique aquatic communities are investigated to provide scientific information to natural resource managers and decision makers.
Endangered species and those that are imperiled receive special research interest. Research on species diversity, life history, health and diseases, aquatic community ecology, and habitat requirements of fish and other aquatic organisms supports the management, conservation, and restoration of our Nation's aquatic resources.
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Research Highlight
Sick Fish May Get Sicker: Climate Change and Other Stresses Expected to Affect Entire Populations of Fish
![Caption: A small-mouth bass with lesions in the Shenandoah River. Photo courtesy of Vicki Blazer, USGS](images/SMBlesionNFshen5-2006blazer.JPG) |
Caption: A small-mouth bass with lesions in the Shenandoah River. Photo courtesy of Vicki Blazer, USGS |
Entire populations of North American fish already are being affected by several emerging diseases, a problem that threatens to increase in the future with climate change and other stresses on aquatic ecosystems, according to a noted U.S. Geological Survey researcher giving an invited talk on this subject today at the Wildlife Disease Association conference in Blaine, Wash. "A generation ago, we couldn't have imaged the explosive growth in disease issues facing many of our wild fish populations," said Dr. Jim Winton, a fish disease specialist at the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center. Disease is often ignored as a factor affecting wild populations of fish and wildlife because the effects are difficult to observe and quantify, noted Winton. But as cold-blooded animals, fish are highly dependent on environmental conditions, especially temperature, to help maintain critical physiological processes such as immune function that can affect whether a fish gets a disease or parasite, how it is affected by it, and how the disease progresses.
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In the Spotlight
The Gulf Sturgeon in the Suwannee River — Questions and Answers - Sturgeons and paddlefishes are modern descendants of an ancient group of freshwater fishes, the Chondrostei (a group of bony fishes with mostly cartilaginous skeletons). Sturgeons evolved during the Age of the Dinosaurs, and have prospered in the large rivers and lakes of North America, Europe and Asia for 200 million years. Together with alligators and crocodiles, they survived the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era, when the dinosaurs and many other groups of animals disappeared forever. Learn more >>
Partnership in Action
USGS is one of the coalition members in the National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP), which brings together Federal and State agencies, Native American Tribes and Alaskan Natives, and sport fishing and conservation groups to collaborate on fish habitat conservation and restoration around the country.
To learn more about National Fish Habitat Action Plan visit its Web site at http://www.fishhabitat.org.
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