The number of salmonid taxa within some genera (e.g. Salmo, Salvelinus, and Coregonus) listed in various databases (e.g. Fishbase or Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes) has increased very rapidly over the past 15-20 years and IUCN policy has promoted conservation assessments of all such taxa. Some of these taxa are so-called “resurrected” valid names, or species-level assignments that have been given to taxa historically assigned to, or first described as, subspecies, or intra-subspecific “forms”. Following a recent trend in Eurasia, subspecific names have been purged, often without any biological investigation. Most involve new descriptions of populations from a single location, or a very restricted geographic area. For such new descriptions, in general, there is little or only a superficial effort at a meta-analysis across the genus, whether or not phenotypic or genetic data are included. Phenotypic diagnosis is very often made based on a suite of characters, with no single character being unique in the genus. Many of these taxa are not widely accepted across the international community, and are associated with very sparse data, and/or little or no data available in the English language. It has become an intractable problem for the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Salmon Specialist Group (SSG) to professionally comment on the Red List Assessments of all of these taxa. The SSG strongly recommends a rigorous evaluation of the validity of these species designations. An example in the UK revealed no robust support for taxonomic subdivision among UK European coregonids (Etheridge et al. 2012). This example, and many others like it throughout Eurasia, have real implications where the legal conservation status is reflected by use of binomial taxonomic names.

Coregonus ussuriensis is a whitefish that occurs in the middle and lower reaches of the Amur River, including Zeya, Bureya, Amgun, Ussuri, and Lake Khanka, the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Tatar Strait, and the northern part of the coast of Sea of Japan. This species is rare and almost extirpated in parts of its range, but widespread overall. Additionally, it is present within the boundaries of multiple protected areas. Therefore, this species is assessed as Least Concern.

Coregonus ussuriensis is a whitefish that occurs in the middle and lower reaches of the Amur River bordering Russia and China, including Zeya, Bureya, Amgun, Ussuri, and Lake Khanka, the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Tatar Strait, and the northern part of the coast of Sea of Japan, Sakhalin along the western (south of the city of Aleksandrovsk) and eastern (south to the Tym River) coasts. Spawning occurs only in Amur River (Antonov et al. 2019) in the Middle (downstream of the city of Blagoveshchensk) and Lower Amur, the rivers Zeya, Bureya, Sungari, Ussuri, Amgun and Lake Evoron.

This is a common species in the Amur overall, although it is almost extirpated from Argun' River, the upper reach of the Amur (Gorlacheva and Afonin 2015).In Khanka Lake it has been rare in recent years (Antonov et al. 2019). The overall population trend of this species is unknown.

A poorly studied species, it is known to reach 60 cm in length, living approximately 10 years and occupying freshwater lakes and rivers (Antonov et al. 2019). It is rare in brackish and salt coastal waters (Antonov et al. 2019).

A lithophilic species, it matures at the age of 5-6 years, spawning in autumn (mainly in November, under the ice) (Antonov et al. 2019). Fecundity is 22.8-45.5 thousand eggs. In catches of north-western Sakhalin river, it ranges in length of 15-52 cm, and a weight of 300-2,100 g (Antonov et al. 2019). In lakes in the lower reaches of the Amur River, individuals up to 53 cm long and up to 2,600 g in weight, aged up to 10 years (Udyl Lake), were previously recorded (Antonov et al. 2019). Females in commercial catches in Lake Orel’ and Chlya are 30-51 cm long (41 cm on average) and 330-2,140 g mass (1050 g), while males are 35-50 cm long (44 cm) and 480-1,460 g mass (835 g) (Antonov et al. 2019).

Yearlings and two-years old stay in shallow waters and banks, whereas adults choose open deep places. In the lower reaches and the Amur Liman Straight, young (less than 20 cm long) feed on invertebrates, mainly misids, cyclops and insect larvae (Antonov et al. 2019). Adult fish feed on small fish (including pink and chum salmon juveniles) and large amphibious insect larvae. In Lake Khanka it eats mostly fish (Antonov et al. 2019). Maximum intensity of feeding is observed in spring and autumn, and in summer, when the waters are heated above 18 °C, feeding almost stops (Antonov et al. 2019).

Fishing is a threat to this species (Antonov et al. 2019).

This species is commercially fished, and also used by local recreational and sport fishing (Antonov et al. 2019). The catch in the Amur is from 100 to 200 tons (Antonov et al. 2019).

No conservation actions for this species are known. However, it is known to occur in multiple protected areas, including The Oldjikan State Nature Reserve and Udyly State Nature Reserve, Russia. Further research is recommended on the population trend of this species.