What a year!

As winter approaches we wanted to reach out and say Thank You for participating in iNaturalist and the Great Lakes Fish Finder project.

We have noted an increase in the usage of the project in the past two years:

The most commonly reported species include Bluegill, Largemouth Bass, Pumpkinseed, and Smallmouth Bass. No surprise there, these are some of the most common fish anglers aim for. This also aligns with the general trend of fish posted to iNaturalist over all (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&quality_grade=research&subview=grid&view=species&iconic_taxa=Actinopterygii).

We noticed Creek Chub suddenly being in the top 20 fish by observation count this year in the iNaturalist database. In fact 590 observations were reported in 2020 compared to 656 for 2015 through 2019. That is almost a doubling of observations in just one year! As this is not a fish anglers typically target, we wonder if this has to do with the rise in Microfishing during COVID times?

We at Shedd hope that people continue to enjoy the outdoors, stay healthy, and know that their fish observations are helpful to research endeavors!

Posted on December 7, 2020 05:37 PM by glfishfinder