Oasis or trap? Mass mortality of overwintering fishes at an Arctic perennial spring and subsequent scavenging activity.

For instance, most or all Dolly Varden ( I Salvelinus malma i ) and Arctic grayling ( I Thymallus arcticus i ) overwintering sites in Alaska's Canning River (Figure 1) are associated with perennial springs (Brown et al., [3]). We are not aware of any previously published description of a mass mortality event among overwintering fish at an Arctic perennial spring, although such occurrences are known among the Iñupiat of the region, including at this particular site (North Slope Subsistence Regional Advisory Council Transcript, [18]). We counted 56 overflow fish, of which we were able to obtain fork lengths for 27 (median fork length: 27 cm, range: 15-35 cm; Glass et al., [13]), and >20 pool fish, although pool fish were frozen deeper in the ice precluding an accurate count. Keywords: Gulo gulo; overwintering habitat; perennial spring; Salvelinus malma; scavenging; Thymallus arcticus EN Gulo gulo overwintering habitat perennial spring Salvelinus malma scavenging Thymallus arcticus 1 5 5 07/05/23 20230701 NES 230701 Riverine perennial springs in the Arctic are often considered oases for aquatic species, providing refugia when rivers run dry during the summer and freeze in winter (Huryn et al., [15]; Power et al., [20]). [Extracted from the article]