Fish fauna in Nose River, a small river flowing into Northern part of Lake Biwa

Artificial changes in the environment, such as river bank reinforcement, affect fish fauna. In order to document the fish fauna before a scheduled river channel reinforcement in 2018, fishes in Nose River, flowing into northern part of Lake Biwa, Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, were collected using casting nets and/or hand nets from April to November 2017. A total of 18 fish species (17 native and one alien species) were collected from the survey sites. Twelve out of these 17 native species are found on the Red list of the Ministry of the Environment on that of Shiga prefecture. Plecoglossus altivelis altivelis and Rhinogobius sp. OM were most abundant at the most upstream and downstream study area, respectively. These records will provide valuable information of the fish fauna in Nose River just before the improvement of this river in 2018.