Advances in fishery biology: biology, exploitation, rearing and propagation of coregonid fishes

Coregonid fishes are abundant and valuable resources in Central European lakes. Originally most of the prealpine lakes were oligotrophic, and even a few decades ago were still considered as such. The situation has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, and now these prealpine lakes show symptoms of accelerated eutrophication! Increased fishing intensity and eutrophication at first produced lager yields, but the species composition of the catches changed, resulting in catches of less commercial value. It has been over 15 years since the Biology of coregonid fishes was published and since than no specialized meeting of this kind has taken place. It is not the intention of this symposium to challenge the excellent achievements of those days. As Lindsey & Woods (1970) put it, the objective of that symposium was to gather together 'current topics at the forefront of evolutionary research' of which coregonid fishes may be an excellent illustration. The objective of this symposium is most at all to promote exchange and cooperation between the countries to which the future of coregonid fishes is of great importance. Closely parallel scientific problems and means of commercial exploitation of coregonid populations should be of great interest not only to symposium participants, but also to all ichthyologists. The presentation of current research on coregonid fishes in the Alpine countries of Europe concerns most of all biology and exploitation. In addition new subjects dealing with population dynamics have also been given attention. Finally, the most recent methods of intensive rearing of coregonid larvae and juveniles have been developed and thus several papers deal with various aspects of fish physiology and biochemistry.