Underwater video of lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis spawning in lake Michigan

The lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis, dikameg in Anishinaabemowin, holds cultural importance, and is a mainstay of commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries throughout North America. In the Laurentian Great Lakes, declines in recruitment, since the early 2000s, have raised concerns among stewards and fishery managers. A more detailed understanding of the lake whitefish mating system could help resolve potential recruitment bottlenecks and thus inform appropriate stewardship actions. Herein, we describe, for the first time, a single lake whitefish spawning event captured using high-resolution underwater videography. From 94 h spent on the water, we captured and analyze a 4.5 min video clip that shows pre-mating, mating, and post-mating behaviour of a male and female lake whitefish from Lake Michigan. The clip shows a number of what we interpret as courtship, site-selection, and spawning behaviours culminating in release of about 20 eggs in a single spawning event. Behaviou..., During 2022-2023, we used a Boxfish Robotics (https://www.boxfishrobotics.com) “Luna” craft to capture high-resolution underwater footage of spawning lake whitefish in lakes Huron and Michigan. The Luna craft is a next-generation drone that utilizes advanced full-frame imaging from a 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 120p Sony A7SIII camera equipped with either a Sony 16-35 mm f/2.8 or a Sony 24mm f/1.4 Zeiss lens. In shallow water, a 250-mm Nauticam glass dome port was used for the best edge-to-edge image quality, but for deepwater filming, a 200-mm Boxfish acrylic dome rated for 500 m depth was used. High sensitivity up to ISO 409,600 provided exceptional low-light camera performance. Two dimmable 8,500-lumen lights attached via adjustable arm mounts to the front of the craft provided ample illumination under all light conditions encountered. The ROV was tethered to the surface by a 300-m long, 2.7-mm diameter, lightweight, fiber-optic cable which allows recording on the surface in 4k ProRes Raw at 30p..., , # Lake Whitefish *Coregonus clupeaformis* Spawning

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tx95x6b67](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tx95x6b67)

The dataset is a 4.5-minute .mp4 underwater video segment showing a lake whitefish *Coregonus clupeaformis* spawning event captured in Little Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan (45.392274 N, 84.923740 W) that began at 19:59, 3 h after sunset (17:02), on 24 November 2022. The video clip commences with what we interpreted as courtship behaviour between a single female and a single male culminating in recovery after a single gamete release. The ripe female was readily identifiable by a characteristic distended abdomen.

The video was captured using a Boxfish Robotics ([https://www.boxfishrobotics.com](https://www.boxfishrobotics.com)) “Luna” craft, which is a next-generation drone that utilizes advanced full-frame imaging from a 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 120p Sony A7SIII camera equipped with either a Sony 16-35 mm f/2.8 or a Sony 24mm f/1.4 Zeiss lens with a 250-mm Nautica...