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After reading the article by Dettmers et al. in the November 2012 issue ofFisheries(“Management of Alewife Using Pacific Salmon in the Great Lakes: Whether to Manage for Economics or the Ecosystem?”), we feel compelled to respond and to present a different perspective on this important management issue. Despite the generally positive contribution to Great Lakes literature made by this article, it contains several inaccuracies concerning the past and current state of Great Lakes ecosystems. Dettmers et al. present an oversimplification of options currently available to Great Lakes fisheries managers; a false dichotomy describing only two future options for management of these fisheries. We submit that managers could strive to “… maintain a diverse salmonid community, [while proceeding] (to the extent possible) with native species rehabilitation” and we conclude that, “… on each of the Great Lakes, managers are pursuing appropriate goals, managing the aquatic resources of the lakes for the greatest public good, given the variability in conditions and likelihood for success specific to each lake.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to many freshwater ecosystems, the Laurentian Great Lakes of North America have undergone numerous anthropogenic stressors resulting in considerable loss of biodiversity and habitat. Among Great Lakes fishes, the coregonine sub-family has endured the most extensive declines, including extinction of several species (Coregonus johannae, C. alpenae, and C. kiyi orientalis) and at least 10 instances of local extirpations of other species (C. nigripinnis, C. reighardi, C. zenithicus, C. hoyi, and C. artedi) across all 5 lakes, much of which occurred prior to the 1960s owing to overfishing, interactions with non-indigenous species, and habitat loss. Despite these declines, no federal-, provincial-, or state-mandated actions were ever implemented to conserve coregonine diversity, potentially because so much of the coregonine declines occurred prior to the enactment of federal conservation legislation. Possible explanations for inaction since enactment of that legislation include insufficient data on biological vulnerability or threats, unresolved taxonomy, and limited support from the fishery management agencies and their stakeholders prior to the 2000s. In recent decades, however, several fishery management agencies have undertaken efforts to re-introduce coregonine diversity. These efforts helped lead to development of a science-based framework to restore coregonines that was universally endorsed by fishery managers representing eight U.S. states, four U.S. tribal organizations, and the province of ON, Canada, in May 2018. The basin-wide framework is based on principles of conservation biology and adaptive management. We describe details of its key steps, including planning, restoring, and evaluating, while also describing recent implementation efforts to develop methods, improve available resources, and enhance coordination across the basin. Although our paper describes a regional effort to restore native coregonines, our adaptive-management approach could be used by other multi-agency stakeholders seeking to conserve or restore native fishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proper data management (applying coordinated standards and structures to data collection, maintenance, retrieval, and documentation) is essential for complex projects to ensure data accuracy and accessibility. In this article, we used a recent project evaluating changes in Lake Whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) growth, condition, and recruitment in the Great Lakes as a case study to illustrate how thoughtful data management approaches can enhance and improve research. Data management best practices described include dedicating personnel to data curation, setting data standards, building a relational database, managing data updates, checking for and trapping errors, extracting data, documenting data sets, and coordinating with project collaborators. The data management actions taken ultimately resulted in a rich body of scientific publication and a robust database available for future studies. Investing in data management allowed this project to serve as a model for taking the first steps toward a common goal of sharing, documenting, and preserving data that are collected and reported during the scientific research process. RESUMEN: en proyectos complejos, un manejo apropiado de datos (aplicación coordinada de estándares y estructuras a recolección, mantenimiento, recuperación y documentación) resulta esencial para asegurar la precisión y accesibilidad de los mismos. En la presente contribución se utiliza un proyecto de evaluación de los cambios en el crecimiento, condición y reclutamiento del coregono en los Grandes Lagos, como caso de estudio para ilustrar cómo un manejo adecuado de datos puede incrementar y mejorar la investigación. Las mejores prácticas en cuanto a manejo de datos incluyen: dedicar personal a la curación de datos, fijar estándares en los datos, construcción de una base de datos relacional, manejo de actualización de datos, revisión y filtro de errores en los datos, extracción de datos, documentación de bases de datos y coordinación con colaboradores del proyecto. Las acciones de manejo de datos que se tomaron resultaron en la producción de un cuerpo importante de publicaciones y en una base de datos robusta, disponible para investigaciones futuras. Los recursos invertidos en el manejo de datos permitieron que este proyecto sirviera de modelo para tomar los primeros pasos hacia el objetivo común de compartir, documentar y preservar datos que son recolectados y reportados durante el proceso de una investigación científica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]