Little is known about this species of freshwater fish that was native to Lake Geneva in Switzerland and France. The primary causes of its extinction are thought to be overfishing for food – in 1890 it and the also extinct True Fera (Coregonus fera) made up almost 70 percent of all fish caught in the lake – and eutrophication, a form of water pollution that results in the overgrowth of algae and other aquatic plants and the death of aquatic animals from lack of oxygen. The gravenche, also known as the Lake Geneva whitefish, was last recorded in the lake in the early 1900s.