Googly-Eyed Cisco May Be New Fish Or Ancient Relic

A googly-eyed cisco hauled out of Great Slave Lake may be very new or a really old relic. Either way, fish biologists are set to scale new heights.

A Canadian scientist may just have discovered an entirely new kind of fish.Or not. Even in the most rigorous of scientific circles, it ain't over till it's over when it comes to hailing a new species. The fish biologist is Paul Vecsei and his new-found fish is some kind of googly-eyed Cisco. Vecsei says he and some federal government researchers were at the Sub Islands near Yellowknife last October, hauling nets, when they pulled up the unusual-looking cisco with large fins, enormous eyes high up on its head and an upturned mouth. "It had enormous eyes for the size of the individual. It had eyes that were unlike other cisco or fish in general," Vecsei, whose company is based in Yellowknife, told CBC News.. The male fish, 27.8 centimetres in length, has been named Coregonus googelii, or the "googly-eyed cisco." "The eyes are positioned very high, so when you look at it from a dorsal view, the eyes are almost joining at the top and you have just a narrow separation." So now researchers are hunkering down to determine whether the thing is a relic of a very old species, a newly-evolved species, or just a variation of cisco that's specific to the Sub Islands. Already common in Great Slave Lake, ciscos can range from tiny fish that live in fast-flowing rivers, to fish as large as whitefish that live in deep lakes. After a quick go round with fish experts across Canada, Vecsei realized he'd caught something new and different. But whether it's a separate species is now open to question, according to Jim Reist, head of Arctic fish ecology with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.. "What one individual may conclude and defend and say, 'This is the way the world is,' another individual working in the same area and on the same material may come up with a differing opinion," he said. Reist said the definition of what constitutes a new species can change on a case-by-case basis and in the case of the ciscos, lines are exceptionally blurry and hard to pin down in the Canadian North, where plants and animals have only been around since the last Ice Age and continue to evolve today. The decision on whether Coregonus googelii should be a new species will come down to a professional judgment call, Reist said. But even after that call is made, corroborating or denigrating evidence may come up which can toss the whole "new species" debate back into the air , so this ain't the end to this fishy tale.