While sometimes difficult to admit, perspectives of European and white males have overwhelmingly dominated fisheries science and management in the USA. This dynamic is exemplified by bias against “rough fish”—a pejorative ascribing low-to-zero value for countless native fishes. One product of this bias is that biologists have ironically worked against conservation of diverse fishes for over a century, and these problems persist today. Nearly all U.S. states retain bag limits and other policies that are regressive and encourage overfishing and decline of native species. Multiple lines of evidence point towards the need for a paradigm shift. These include: (1) native species deliver critical ecosystem services; (2) little demonstration that native fish removals deliver intended benefits; (3) many native fishes are long-lived and vulnerable to overfishing and decline; and (4) fisher values and demographics shifting towards native fish conservation. Overall, existing native fish policies are unacceptable and run counter to the public trust doctrine where government agencies manage natural resources for public use. We encourage agencies to revisit their policies regarding native fishes and provide suggestions for developing more holistic, protective, and inclusive conservation policy.

Managing fisheries through rapid environmental change requires diverse approaches for identifying and adapting to novel ecological conditions. For the Wisconsin Ceded Territory, we calculated 473 adult walleye (Sander vitreus) production (P), biomass (B), and P/B estimates for 1990–2012. Frequency distributions for production statistics were right-skewed, indicating the fishery is generally dominated by low production populations. Mean P, B, and P/B were significantly elevated in natural recruitment (NR) lakes compared with combination (NR + stocking) and stocked-only lakes. Furthermore, combination populations had significantly higher production compared with stocked-only lakes. In NR lakes, walleye productivity changed little over time; however, the proportion of NR populations has declined over time. In combination and stocked-only populations, there were significant temporal declines in P, B, and P/B, and the proportion of these lakes has increased through time. This study reveals the crucial link between fish recruitment potential and fish production, helping to explain why the regional walleye fishery is struggling. Causes for walleye recruitment and production declines remain unclear, but long-term shifts in fish habitats are likely involved (e.g., from climate change and indirect food web effects). Decreasing walleye production is an important and emerging fishery management challenge in the region and portends a need to adapt fisheries management systems collaboratively for future sustainability.

Tracking habitat use and dietary shifts in migratory species is vital to conservation and management. Yet, conventional animal tracking often precludes tracking small juveniles at critical life stages where recruitment bottlenecks often manifest. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) in consecutive laminae in eye lenses, a protein‐rich depositional tissue, has emerged as a promising tool in fishes to develop long‐term interpretive records of dietary histories using a single archival tissue. Currently, studies using fish eye lenses to study SIA in diets have primarily been conducted in marine environments using δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N to identify resource partitioning, ontogenetic shifts and lifelong trophic histories. To date, no studies have examined freshwater taxa nor used δ³⁴S isotopes. We placed juvenile (Chinook Salmon) Oncorhynchus tshawytscha in experimental enclosures in three different freshwater habitats (hatchery, river and seasonal floodplain), each with isotopically distinct and well‐characterized food webs. This experimental approach allowed us to directly measure diets and quantify tissue turnover rates in eye lenses as well as the isotopic fractionation among fish tissues (fin and muscle tissue) in distinct habitat types using stable isotopes δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ³⁴S. Bulk eye‐lens stable isotope measurements were analysed for juvenile salmon lenses and were found to be consistent with the isotopic values of rearing habitats. Slight additional isotopic fractionation was only found in δ¹³C. We then successfully applied the method to a larger, reproductively mature adult salmon captured in freshwater and inferred juvenile habitat use. SIA in eye lenses using three dietary isotopes (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ³⁴S) has significant potential for answering critical questions about migration, diet, foraging ecology and life history of migratory aquatic animals on Earth. Such information would have immediate application towards conservation management of diverse species and habitats at multiple scales.

Synchronous dynamics (fluctuations that occur in unison) are universal phenomena with widespread implications for ecological stability. Synchronous dynamics can amplify the destabilizing effect of environmental variability on ecosystem functions such as productivity, whereas the inverse, compensatory dynamics, can stabilize function. Here we combine simulation and empirical analyses to elucidate mechanisms that underlie patterns of synchronous versus compensatory dynamics. In both simulated and empirical communities, we show that synchronous and compensatory dynamics are not mutually exclusive but instead can vary by timescale. Our simulations identify multiple mechanisms that can generate timescale‐specific patterns, including different environmental drivers, diverse life histories, dispersal, and non‐stationary dynamics. We find that traditional metrics for quantifying synchronous dynamics are often biased toward long‐term drivers and may miss the importance of short‐term drivers. Our findings indicate key mechanisms to consider when assessing synchronous versus compensatory dynamics and our approach provides a pathway for disentangling these dynamics in natural systems.