Fourhorn sculpin COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 9
Special Significance of the Species
The fourhorn sculpin is of little direct commercial or sportfishing interest, but recreational fishers may inadvertently catch it. For example, Dayman (pers. comm. 2002) accidentally snagged an individual on a hook baited with bacon while ice-fishing on the Husky Lakes, NT. The marine form has been occasionally used as food by native people in the Hudson Bay region (Scott and Scott 1988), but there is little evidence indicating whether the freshwater form has been utilized in this manner.
The fourhorn sculpin is of special interest to the scientific community concerned with Canadian post-glacial dispersion and zoogeography. The species may be of value as an indicator of environmental quality due to morphological changes resulting from sublethal effects of pollutants and could be a key species to monitor in areas of development in the Arctic. Its distribution and evolution in the freshwater and euryhaline lakes of the Arctic Islands is of scientific interest and the populations should be protected in these environments that are particularly sensitive to perturbance, as the fish may be genetically different from marine populations.
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