Evidence
Where all of this came from.
39 reference records rest on 224 published pages, and 109 of those come from state and provincial natural-resources departments. That suits a set of records about what lives in the water those departments survey. The rest is federal survey work, university and extension guides, and interagency reports. The counts are below. Every reviewed line sits behind a record or a search, with the sources standing behind its record.
How to read this
A line is cited as precisely as someone checked it.
Where a reviewer traced a line to the pages that carry it, the line names those pages and, when the evidence is narrower than the record, where it comes from — one coast, one lake, one region. 605 of 1049 of the lines below are traced that way. The rest show the sources standing behind their whole record, marked “record’s sources”, because nobody has yet checked which page carried which line, and printing a single citation there would be a mapping nobody made.
National
52
A federal or national government body — USGS, NOAA, EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Park Service, Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
State
109
A state, provincial or commonwealth natural-resources department. Most of this carrier rests here, which suits it: these are the bodies that survey the water the records describe.
Interagency
12
A commission or joint survey run across several agencies, such as the Great Lakes Fishery Commission's forage task groups.
University
45
A university research programme, cooperative extension service or Sea Grant office. Published work, but not the agency that manages the water.
Journal
6
A peer-reviewed paper, or a curated scientific register such as the World Register of Marine Species. Added with the 2026-09-25 evidence review, which went to the primary study where no agency page said what a claim needed.
Probe leftovers
What the weekly check could not treat as ordinary.
These addresses are still the citations. The check named what it saw. None of them is a gone page in the MISIN sense, so the records were not rewritten to hide a redirect, a timeout, or a bot wall.
Iowa DNR — BluegillMoved
The cited address answers through a permanent redirect. GET on the page that lands still names Bluegill.
A same-site move that still names the animal is not the MISIN case. The citation stays until a reviewer reads the new address into the record.
CASG — market squidUnreachable from this network
The California Sea Grant market-squid page times out from the probe network.
NOAA still covers the same animal on this record. The CASG address stays; a timeout is not a reason to drop a citation.
Mass.gov — menhaden and longfin squidRefused the probe
Both creature-feature pages answered 403 from the probe network.
A bot wall is not evidence the page is gone. The citations stay; the weekly check does not fail the build on unverifiable.
Michigan DNR — crayfish identification PDFRefused the probe
The cited PDF answered 403 from the probe network.
A refused PDF is not a 404. The citation stays on the crayfish record until a reviewer can open it.
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute — silversidesRefused the probe
The Menidia page answered 500 from the probe network.
A 500 is not a 404, and it is not a 403. The citation stays.
Claims
Every reviewed line in the app.
Alewife / river herring →29 lines
- What you can seeBelly scutes are unusually sharp — the 'sawbelly' — stronger than on most other members of the herring familyMAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE
- What you can seeEye diameter is greater than the length of the snout; one old name for the fish is bigeye herringNY-SEAGRANT-INVASIVE-HERRING, ADW-ALEWIFE
- What you can seeSingle dull dark shoulder spot just behind the upper margin of the gill coverUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, MAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE, NY-SEAGRANT-INVASIVE-HERRING
- What you can seeLower jaw juts out beyond the upperILDNR-ALEWIFE, VTFWD-ALEWIFE
- What you can seeNo adipose fin, and no trailing dorsal filamentUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, ILDNR-ALEWIFE
- What you can seeDeeply forked tail; slab-sided silvery bodyUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, MAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE
- What argues against itA small fleshy adipose fin behind the dorsal separates cisco from alewife — the cisco has one and the alewife does notUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE
- What argues against itA long thread trailing from the back fin and a short blunt snout point to gizzard shadNY-SEAGRANT-INVASIVE-HERRING
- What argues against itA spiny front dorsal fin, or a second dorsal fin, rules out alewife — it has a single soft-rayed dorsalILDNR-ALEWIFE
- What argues against itBlueback herring is separated reliably by a dark body-cavity lining; on a live fish, its eye is no wider than its snout is longUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, NY-SEAGRANT-INVASIVE-HERRING
- Declared limitLandlocked Great Lakes alewife run much smaller than the anadromous Atlantic form; the size bands here follow Great Lakes and survey figures.USGS-NAS-ALEWIFEEvidence from: Inland vs marine populations
- Declared limitThe 100 mm total-length figure separating age-0 from older fish is a Lake Michigan survey convention, not a hard biological boundary.USGS-GLSC-LAKE-MICHIGAN-PREYFISHEvidence from: Lake Michigan fall bottom-trawl and acoustic surveys
- Declared limitThis record does not claim alewife are present in any particular water.record’s sources
- Size bandyoung-of-year: 4-100 (60-100 by autumn in the Great Lakes) mmUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, USGS-GLSC-LAKE-MICHIGAN-PREYFISHEvidence from: Great Lakes landlocked alewife; 100 mm cutoff from Lake Michigan fall surveys
- Size bandadult: 100-250 (Great Lakes yearling and older; sea-run adults to 380) mmUSGS-GLSC-LAKE-MICHIGAN-PREYFISH, USGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, MAINE-DMR-RIVER-HERRING-FACTSEvidence from: Landlocked Great Lakes alewife; sea-run figures noted
- Water typelake-openrecord’s sources
- Water typelake-marginrecord’s sources
- Water typeriverrecord’s sources
- Water typereservoirrecord’s sources
- Life stageyoung-of-yearrecord’s sources
- Life stageadultrecord’s sources
- Where it sitsopen water for most of the yearUSGS-GLSC-LAKE-ONTARIO-PREYFISHEvidence from: Lake Ontario
- Where it sitsnear the lake bottom in winter and early springUSGS-GLSC-LAKE-ONTARIO-PREYFISH, USGS-NAS-ALEWIFEEvidence from: Great Lakes (Lake Ontario)
- Where it sitsyoung-of-year fish stay above the thermocline by dayUSGS-GLSC-LAKE-MICHIGAN-PREYFISH, USGS-NAS-ALEWIFEEvidence from: Great Lakes, stratified season
- Where it sitsruns into tributaries and shallow water to spawnUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE, MAINE-DMR-RIVER-HERRING-FACTS
- How it movesschooling in open waterrecord’s sources
- How it movesmoves shallow at night to spawn once the water passes about 15 degrees CelsiusUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFEEvidence from: Great Lakes
- Sources disagreeMaine Department of Marine Resources gives two spawning temperature ranges on two pages: 12.8 to 15.5 °C on its river herring fact sheet, and from about 13 °C up to about 20 °C on its alewife page. The calendar window keeps the fact-sheet range.record’s sources
- Sources disagreeFamily placement differs by source: Maine Department of Marine Resources lists alewife in Clupeidae, while Missouri Department of Conservation places Alosa species in Alosidae after a 2022 split.record’s sources
- U.S. Geological Survey Nonindigenous Aquatic SpeciesUSGS-NAS-ALEWIFE · National · read 2026-09-22
- Maine Department of Marine ResourcesMAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE · State · read 2026-09-02
- New York Sea GrantNY-SEAGRANT-INVASIVE-HERRING · University · read 2026-09-02
- U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center / Great Lakes Fishery CommissionUSGS-GLSC-LAKE-ONTARIO-PREYFISH · Interagency · read 2026-09-02
- U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center / Great Lakes Fishery CommissionUSGS-GLSC-LAKE-MICHIGAN-PREYFISH · Interagency · read 2026-09-02
- Illinois Department of Natural ResourcesILDNR-ALEWIFE · State · read 2026-09-25
- Vermont Fish & Wildlife DepartmentVTFWD-ALEWIFE · State · read 2026-09-25
- Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of ZoologyADW-ALEWIFE · University · read 2026-09-25
- Maine Department of Marine ResourcesMAINE-DMR-RIVER-HERRING-FACTS · State · read 2026-09-25
- Maine Department of Marine ResourcesMAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE-SEA-RUN · State · read 2026-09-25
- Fisheries and Oceans CanadaDFO-BAITFISH-PRIMER · National · read 2026-09-02
- Missouri Department of ConservationMDC-GOLDEN-SHINER · State · read 2026-09-02
The pages themselves
All 224, and what each one is holding up.
- Fisheries and Oceans Canada
DFO-BAITFISH-PRIMER
- Illinois Department of Natural Resources
ILDNR-ALEWIFE
- Maine Department of Marine Resources
MAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE
- Maine Department of Marine Resources
MAINE-DMR-ALEWIFE-SEA-RUN
- Maine Department of Marine Resources
MAINE-DMR-RIVER-HERRING-FACTS
- Missouri Department of Conservation
MDC-GOLDEN-SHINER
- New York Sea Grant
NY-SEAGRANT-INVASIVE-HERRING
- U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center / Great Lakes Fishery Commission
USGS-GLSC-LAKE-MICHIGAN-PREYFISH
- U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center / Great Lakes Fishery Commission
USGS-GLSC-LAKE-ONTARIO-PREYFISH
- U.S. Geological Survey Nonindigenous Aquatic Species
USGS-NAS-ALEWIFE
- Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department
VTFWD-ALEWIFE
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