Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

Golder Associates biologist Dale Robertson holds a large inconnu during a March 2010 survey on Yellowknife Bay. - photo courtesy of Paul Vecsei

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After another season of studying the strange and uniquely northern inconnu, a Yellowknife biologist is still baffled as to why they disappeared from Yellowknife Bay 60 years ago only to make a dramatic rebound over the last 10 years.

Inconnu, or coney in the local vernacular, is a large type of whitefish, all of which are members of the family Salmonidae, a grouping of fish species that include trout, salmon and grayling. Inconnu have a circumpolar distribution and Great Slave Lake and its tributaries represent the most eastward extend of its range.

While Yellowknife biologist Paul Vecsei of Golder Associates, who has been monitoring the inconnu since 2010, said the fish said 30 to 40 of these fish turn up in his nets each time he heads out onto Yellowknife Bay to conduct research.

Golder Associates was contracted by the Yellowknives Dene First Nation that year to examine the fish's resurgence. The project is also supported by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Vecsei doesn't know where the inconnu are coming from but does have his suspicions.

"They're in the bay now because these are probably Slave River coney that are using our bay as seasonal habitat," he said.

While inconnu are turning up in Yellowknife Bay after a decades-long absence, one place they don't seem to be is in the Yellowknife River. Inconnu, which can weigh upwards of 60 pounds and grow more than 1.5 metres long, head up rivers to spawn in the fall.

The Yellowknives Dene of history accounts of fall spawning runs prior to the settlement of Yellowknife where "fish were basically climbing on top of each other to get moving up the river," as former Ndlio chief Fred Sangris said last year of his grandfather's memories.

Vecsei said he has heard anecdotal evidence of inconnu being found in the Yellowknife River but has no hard evidence of their presence in the river, let alone of them spawning there.

"It seems like there are occasionally coney seen or captured or heard about being captured in the river but there is no photo evidence," said Vecsei.

"I have not been given a photo of a person standing in Tartan Rapids holding up a coney that they then released."

Vecsei said it is still a "mystery" as to why this predator species disappeared 60 years ago in the first place.

"There used to be coney running the Yellowknife river en-mass, and it's not like we can pinpoint it to overfishing because the large scale commercial and industrialized fishing hadn't really begun to take hold when this happened," said Vecsei.

"Nor does it look like there was any major habitat alteration that we can pinpoint. People blame the mines, but we don't really have the science to back that up that the river itself could have been so affected."

He said the number of fish in the bay compared to historical numbers is difficult to determine, though it's widely accepted from traditional knowledge that they were once quite abundant.

"There is no historic data, per se in catch per unit effort. We've done that, so we have now a baseline. For example, you have a net, the net is perhaps 100 metres long, two metres high and you fish it for 10 hour bursts before checking Š but it's not like someone was doing that for the last 60, 70 years," he said.

In terms of next steps, he said he would like to speak more with elders to find out if there is something he may have missed about habitat change in the Yellowknife River over the years. He also wants to check the river in the spring to see if there is a run then.

Mark Feldberg, owner of Yellowknife Fish Company, said he first heard of inconnu returning to Yellowknife Bay about six years ago, and that he has caught some near the bay himself.

"When I was working last winter, we caught quite a few inconnu of various sizes," said Feldberg. He said he would typically come up with 10 or so he checked his set near the West Mirage Islands during the 2010/2011 season.

Feldberg said he believes their return can correlated to the closure of Giant Mine, which stopped smelting operations in 1999.

"I know they're very sensitive, and usually (a disappearance) is due to disturbance," said Feldberg.

Representatives with the Yellowknives Dene could not be reached for comment by press time.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.