Photo Scanner: Long-finned Char

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Long-finned Char

Salvethymus svetovidovi, also called the long-finned charr, is a species of salmonid fish. It is endemic to Elgygytgyn Lake in Chukotka, north-eastern Russia. The long-finned char is a morphologically aberrant type of char; when scientifically first described in 1990, it was placed as the single species in a new monotypic genus Salvethymus. It is closely related to the true chars in the genus Salvelinus, and probably is a sister lineage to the arctic char complex (Salvelinus alpinus). Arctic char or Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) is both a freshwater and saltwater fish, native to Arctic, sub-Arctic and alpine lakes and coastal waters. No other freshwater fish is found as far north. It is the only species of fish in Lake Hazen, on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. It is one of the rarest fish species in Britain, found only in deep, cold, glacial lakes, mostly in Scotland, and is at risk from acidification. It is also found in deep mountain lakes in Ireland. In other parts of its range, such as Scandinavia, it is much more common, and is fished extensively. It is also common in the Alps, (particularly in Trentino and in the mountain part of Lombardy), where it can be found in lakes up to an altitude of 2,600 m (8,500 ft). In Siberia, it is known as golets (from the Russian ?????) and it has been introduced in lakes where it sometimes threatens less hardy endemic species, like the long-finned char.