Sturgeon, America's forgotten dinosaurs, show signs of life

JULY 10, 2019

by Ben Finley, Patrick Whittle And John Flesher

Sturgeon were America's vanishing dinosaurs, armor-plated beasts that crowded the nation's rivers until mankind's craving for caviar pushed them to the edge of extinction.

More than a century later, some populations of the massive bottom feeding fish are showing signs of recovery in the dark corners of U.S. waterways.

Increased numbers are appearing in the cold streams of Maine, the lakes of Michigan and Wisconsin and the coffee-colored waters of Florida's Suwannee River.

A 14-foot Atlantic sturgeon—as long as a Volkswagen Beetle—was recently spotted in New York's Hudson River.

"It's really been a dramatic reversal of fortune," said Greg Garman, a Virginia Commonwealth University ecologist who studies Atlantic sturgeon in Virginia's James River. "We didn't think they were there, frankly. Now, they're almost every place we're looking."

Following the late 1800s caviar rush, America's nine sturgeon species and subspecies were plagued by pollution, dams and overfishing. Steep declines in many populations weren't fully apparent until the 1990s.

"However, in the past three decades, sturgeon have been among the most studied species in North America as a result of their threatened or endangered status," said James Crossman, president of The North American Sturgeon and Paddlefish Society, a conservation group.

Read On

Wildlife officers resuscitate poached sturgeon in California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — State wildlife officers resuscitated a 66-inch sturgeon and cited the man who pulled the fish from the Sacramento River.

Janice Mackey of the Department of Fish and Wildlife said Thursday that officers spotted the suspected poacher along the river near Clarksburg last week.

The man hooked a very large fish and drove off with it in the bed of his pickup truck.

The officers immediately pulled the man over and brought the large, untagged fish back to the riverbed, where they rocked it back and forth, moving water over its gills.

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Ancient sturgeon in China's Yangtze 'nearly extinct'

15 September 2014 Last updated at 07:28

The Chinese sturgeon, thought to have existed for more than 140 million years, is now on the brink of extinction, according to local media.

Xinhua reported that no wild sturgeon reproduced naturally last year in the Yangtze river.

It was the first time since researchers began recording levels 32 years ago.

Chinese researches say the fall is due to rising levels of pollution in the Yangtze river and the construction of dozens of dams.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences also found that no young sturgeons were found swimming along the Yangtze toward the sea during the period they usually do so.

A researcher told Xinhua that in the 1980s, at least several thousand sturgeon could be found in the river. It is estimated only around 100 fish remain.

"Without natural reproduction, the fish population cannot replenish itself. If there are no further steps taken to strengthen conservation, the wild sturgeon faces the danger of extinction," he said.

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Hate mail for caviar producer accusing him of dumping unwanted fish in North Devon

By North Devon Journal | Posted: April 17, 2014

A NORTH Devon sturgeon farmer producing caviar for some of the UK's top restaurants has received hate mail which accuses him of dumping unwanted fish.

However Ken Benning, owner of Exmoor Caviar, has hit back at the claims, and has said smoked sturgeon is itself in demand at restaurants across the country.

Mr Benning, who is producing Britain’s first commercially-grown caviar, said: "We’ve had some nasty emails from misinformed people.

"There’s a general perception that the fish is killed purely for its eggs – the caviar – and then thrown away. But that’s completely not true.

"None of our fish is wasted. Even the heads are boiled up for stock.

"Sturgeon meat is wonderfully fatty and perfect for smoking. The caviar has all the glamour and the luxury image but smoked sturgeon is absolutely crucial to our business."

read on

'Monster fish' in Lake Washington? It's not the first time

LAKE WASHINGTON - Biologists with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife were out on Lake Washington on Tueday taking DNA and other samples from a seven-foot sturgeon found over the weekend by a family out water skiing in the northern section of the lake.

Keith Magnuson said his son first spotted as they were speeding along in their boat on Saturday morning. "That's a shark!" was the assessment at first glance. They then went back to see what it was.

Floating upside down is a large white fish without scales. Eight feet was their initial guess. They were close, but figured it wasn't a shark. It was a sturgeon.

But it probably wasn't the first time. Magnuson remembers a case in 1987. 

"For years there had been monster sightings, like Loch Ness-type stuff," he said, pointing from the Seattle shore over toward Kenmore. "And finally a dead sturgeon came to the top and that was surmised to be the monster." 

Brad James, a biologist with Fish and Wildlife in Vancouver, Wash. and the agency's expert on the pre-historic looking fish, says sturgeon primarily spawn in the Columbia, Sacramento and Fraser rivers, but there is also a population that lives in Puget Sound. He said it's likely the fish swam into the lake through the Ballard Locks, and could have been feeding in the lake for years, only discovered once it died and floated to the surface.

James said the biologists from the department's field office in Mill Creek will also check the fish for tags, that along with DNA will help identify where it came from.

The case is just another one for the unusual fish files of Washington state. In 2011, the decomposing head of a large tropical dwelling hammerhead shark was found on a beach in West Seattle. In 2002, a 100 pound, five foot long rag fish was found dead on a beach in Olympia. That fish normally lives in depths of up to 1,400 feet off the coast. In 2007, another seven foot sturgeon was found in Olympia's black lake.

Biologists also plan to date the fish, by counting growth patterns not unlike tree rings. James said some sturgeon can grow faster than others so the size does not dictate the age of the fish.

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Scientists Use Satellites, Underwater Robot to Study Atlantic Sturgeon Migrations

May 3, 2013 — More than a century ago, an estimated 180,000 female Atlantic sturgeon arrived from the coast in the spring to spawn in the Delaware River and fishermen sought their caviar as a lucrative export to Europe. Overfishing contributed to steep population declines, however, and today numbers have dwindled to fewer than 300 adults. 

Researchers at the University of Delaware and Delaware State University are using satellites, acoustic transmitters, an underwater robot and historical records to pinpoint the ocean conditions that the fish prefer during migrations -- and potentially help fishermen avoid spots where they might unintentionally catch this endangered species. 

"There are specific, observable waters in the ocean that we hypothesize are more associated with this species," said Matthew Oliver, assistant professor of oceanography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. 

Oliver and graduate student Matt Breece compared prior years' satellite data on ocean temperature and chlorophyll levels with locations where sturgeon were previously tracked migrating along the Mid-Atlantic coast. Based on patterns they found between the datasets, they are now using current satellite information to make rough daily predictions on where the sturgeon are migrating. 

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130503230319.htm

Giant fish caught in Chinese river

A sturgeon weighing more than half a ton is caught by startled fishermen in northeast China.

The 617kg Kaluga fish was caught on Tuesday in Heilongjiang River, at Tongjiang, a city that borders Russia in northeast China.

The Kaluga is a large predatory sturgeon only found in the Heilongjiang River basin. Chen Lin, the fisherman who caught the fish said it was the biggest he had ever seen. Chen, along with fellow fishermen, sent the fish to a local sturgeon breeding station.

According to breeders, the sturgeon is a female and is currently carrying about 1.2 million eggs. Staff at the station will collect the roe and implement artificial insemination. The fish fry will be released into the Heilongjiang River.

Kaluga fish are believed to have existed for 130 million years and are claimed to be the largest freshwater fish in the world. The fish is listed as critically endangered, having been fished to near extinction for its valuable roe.

Contains video from Reuters.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/9271572/Giant-fish-caught-in-Chinese-river.html

125-year-old sturgeon - via D R Shoop

SHAWANO, Wis. - The state Department of Natural Resources has tagged a 125-year-old sturgeon that's bigger than a linebacker and is the largest on record in Wisconsin.

Officials found the 7-foot-3-inch long, 240-pound female sturgeon in the Wolf River near Shawano on Tuesday, said DNR sturgeon biologist Ron Bruch. He estimated the fish was born around 1887, when Grover Cleveland was president.

"I knew they were out there and I thought, `We finally got one of these massive, nuclear submarine-type sturgeon,'" he said Wednesday.

He said the fish is the largest tagged and released in the Lake Winnebago system since the state started the tagging program, which is aimed at keeping tabs on their population, in 1950s.

At 240 pounds, she's only 2 pounds heavier than Green Bay Packers linebacker Desmond Bishop. (The fish would have weighed about 30 pounds more, but had recently laid some eggs.) At 87.5 inches long, she's 3 1/2 inches taller than former Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut.

The fish, which the state released back into the river after it was tagged, was also the largest ever captured in the state. The previous record - a sturgeon weighing 212.2 pounds and 84.2 inches long - was set in 2010 during the sturgeon spearing season.

Officials also tagged 565 fish on Tuesday, the most ever in one day. DNR officials tagged about 2,000 fish during this spawning season, above the average of about 1,200, Bruch said.



http://www.startribune.com/local/147038605.html

Sea Monster Washes Ashore in SC

According to live5news.com, a veterinarian from the South Carolina Aquarium identified the body as that of a sturgeon.

There are several sturgeon species in North America, and all get large.  The Atlantic sturgeon is the species that is found in South Carolina waters, and they can grow to be 15 feet long and weigh 800 pounds (although more commonly they are less than ten feet long and weigh around 300 pounds).  Sturgeons have been around for over 100 million years, and individual fish can live to be over 60 years old. 

Their bodies are covered in bony plates called scutes rather then scales, and they have tiny eyes and barbels on their face that help them locate prey in the muddy bottom of murky water, all of which gives them their bizarre appearance. 

Sadly, sturgeon are on the decline. National Wildlife Federation reports:

Read on:  http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_oddities/2012/03/sea-monster-washes-ashore-in-sc.html#mkcpgn%3dfbapl14

Atlantic sturgeon's listing as endangered could affect Delaware dredging

It lives at the bottom of the river.

It's ancient and ugly - often described as a dinosaur with fins.

And although it once made the region the caviar capital of the world, the Atlantic sturgeon is being declared an endangered species, a decision that could affect the Delaware River deepening project.

No one is saying the sturgeon will become the snail darter of the Delaware. Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service, which is making final the endangered listing, and the Army Corps of Engineers say the fish does not have the power to scuttle the project.

But they concede that schedules might have to change or other alterations be made to accommodate the spectacularly picky sturgeon, which will spawn only in certain areas.

"We are concerned about dredging and the impacts on the species," said NOAA's Kim Damon-Randall, supervisory fishery biologist. One of the agency's documents said the scope of the project, plus the ample unknowns about the fish's preferred spawning habitat, "indicate that the project could be very harmful" to the sturgeon.

In anticipation of the listing, the Army Corps has already been working with federal fisheries officials, said spokesman Ed Voigt.

"As we move forward, we're coordinating . . . to ensure that with each step of the project, we avoid impacts to the Atlantic sturgeon and other species."

But, he said, "there's no reason to expect some kind of change is going to transform the cost and scope of the project."

Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, disagreed. She said the listing should "have significant ramifications" for the deepening project. If it does not, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network is "well positioned for a very strong legal case."

Scientists are still trying to figure out what portions of the river the fish prefers and why, and preliminary results indicate that a favored habitat is a tanker anchorage near Marcus Hook - which is slated for deepening.

"There are usually several big tankers anchored there, and right below them, baby sturgeon," said Delaware fisheries biologist Matt Fisher, who has caught young sturgeon and implanted acoustic equipment so they could be tracked.

Continued reading:  http://articles.philly.com/2012-02-02/news/31017049_1_atlantic-sturgeon-young-sturgeon-critical-habitat

articles on misidentifications of mystery aquatics (1) (Via Chad Arment)

July 23, 1955 — Diver solves mystery of 'sea monster': The mystery of Green Bay's "sea monster" apparently has been cleared up, thanks to the sharp eyesight of diver Wayne Truttman.


Truttman, who spends some of his leisure time in a cottage on the bayshore, said he definitely established the identity of the "monsters" (plural that is) Friday evening. He said the monsters are in reality two sturgeon, each about seven feet long, which apparently have been feeding in shallow water near the bay shore.

"I had a good look at them Friday evening," Truttman said. "They're definitely sturgeon."

Truttman said the appearance of a "double-humped monster" apparently was caused by the fins of the sturgeon protruding from the water.

Sheriff's Deputy Ray Delforge and other sheriff's officers said they had noticed the fish before, but were unable to establish their identity.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110723/GPG0101/107230610/Today-history