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Abstract

Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and other members of their expedition collected and identified nearly 400 species of plants and animals during the Voyage of Discovery. Of this total, 31 species of fish were included in Burrough’s summary of the natural history of the Expedition, including 12 fishes considered unknown to science at that time. While there is little doubt of the identity of fish for which Lewis and Clark provided detailed descriptions in their daily logs, other species designations were largely conjecture based on later scholars interpretation of the Lewis and Clarks account. Unlike other biological specimens encountered during the Expedition, no fishes were brought back for study. As a result, the identity of some fishes was never resolved. Many other fishes were reclassified during the past century based on updated scientific methods.