The Arctic Council’s biodiversity Working Group, the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), has released Pacific Arctic Marine Fishes, an atlas and guide to 101 species in the Pacific Arctic Region.

Species accounts in the atlas provide: documentation of the biodiversity and distribution maps supported by citation of specimens, catch records, and literature; habitat and morphological descriptions; and remarks on taxonomic issues with implications from DNA barcoding. Pages of fish photographs with labeled features are grouped separately in an identification guide.

This 400-page atlas and guide presents results of the Russian-American Long-term Census of the Arctic (RUSALCA) fish investigations conducted by bottom trawl in the Pacific Arctic region northward from Bering Strait. The RUSALCA baseline objective coordinates well with the marine biodiversity monitoring objectives of CAFF’s Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme (CBMP), and this atlas and guide became priorities for completion as a contribution to the CBMP, as well as fulfillment of objectives for NOAA Arctic Research Office contracts for RUSALCA.