Canadian Field-Naturalist: Fishes stranded during extreme Iow tides in Minas Basin, Nova Scotia

On each trip, no attempt was made to collect larger specimens of skates, flounders, sea ravens, lumpfish, and goosefish. The study resulted in several new records for species not previously reported from the Minas Basin. Most of the fish species have one or more adaptations fitting them to live in the Minas Basin intertidal zone with its dynamic semi-diurnal tides of nearly 50-foot amplitude.

Examples of these adaptations according to Bleakney and McAllister (1973) were as follows: one third of the species were euryhaline (anadromous, catadromous or brackish-water tolerants); benthic fishes with flattened bodies; large broad-base heads; barbels to find food (turbidity prevents visual prey location) and perhaps mechanism to decrease clogging of gills by wave disturbed sediments. An article describing the tidal pool study was published in the Canadian Field-Naturalist (Bleakney and McAllister, 1973).

Species distribution information associated with this article were digitized, standardized and republished by OBIS Canada as part of the Atlantic Coastal Zone Information Steering Committee (ACZISC) Atlantic Ecosystem Initiative (AEI) funded project “Atlantic Canada’s Biological Data for Ecosystem Planning and Decision-making”. This resource contains simple presence information - scientific name and location. Precise information on the location and date of sampling was not provided in the published article.