The 2008 Great Lakes Lake Sturgeon Coordination Meeting was held December 3-4, 2008 in Port Huron, Michigan. Funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust.

Great Lakes Lake Sturgeon Coordination Meeting, December 3-4, 2008

Breakout Group Reporting - DRAFT

Research and Information Needs Breakout

Dorsal Fin Group

Information Gaps

• Early life history - larval drift to yearling stage
• Early habitat requirements
• Nursery requirements
• Factors influencing egg mortality
• Potential for allee effects at low population densities
• Imprinting - mechanism or life stage (test with streamside rearing facilities?)
• Juvenile migration patterns
• Sturgeon passage at barriers
• Paired-plant assessment stocking life stages (survival, imprinting, etc)
• Natural straying rates vs stocked straying rates
• Impacts of climate change
• Invasive species, diets changes, growth, etc.
• Bioenergetics and invasive forage base (compare with natural food sources)
• Thiaminase high in invasive mussels…is this a problem?
• Fluctuating water levels / flows
• Determination of sustainable exploitation rates
• Investigation of minimum population sizes
• Investigate carrying capacity
• How do you measure impact/success of outreach activities?
• Determine which outreach activities get the biggest impact?
• Habitat availability and requirements for all life stages
• Role of hatcheries in recovery
• Disease (botulism, VHS) investigations
• Contaminant effects on growth, survival, reproduction
• Potential lampricide impacts, sea lamprey predation effects

 

Upper Caudal Fin Group

Research needs

• Refining and expanding genetic research on LS
• Critical habitat char. Based on biological and geophysical parameters
• Fish passage and other engineered mitigations
• New technology in movement studies
• Social research on marketability of LS recreational fisheries
• Determine socio-economic solution to caviar issue
• Impact of catch and release on LS
• Determine pre-European settlement LS abundance and range
• HSI Model
• Complete toxicological compendium

 

Lower Caudal Fin Group

Remaining Needs

• Funding
• Establish schedule for standardized surveys of populations: important streams surveyed
  every year and other streams surveyed on a 5 year cycle (similar to what the sea lamprey
  program does for lamprey).
• Definitions need to be clearly defined for things like: sustainable, distinct population,
  healthy population.
• Education (needed for varied audience; could/should include children, managers,
  congress, etc...)
• Creating an iconic figure for the great lakes (sturgeon could be the icon for Great Lakes
  restoration - just like the panda for the WWF or the blue goose for the Refuges).

 

Anal Fin Group

Research Needs:

• Describe age structure and size of each lake sturgeon population
• Identify juvenile habitat
• Develop an index of recruitment and variability of recruitment, e.g. basin-wide juvenile
  index survey
• Identify ecological role lake sturgeon play in their aquatic community
• Document role lake sturgeon play in human communities

 

Ventral Fin Group

Research and Assessment Needs:

• Standardization of techniques
• Testing of fish passage devices
• Post-stocking evaluations
• Determine habitat characteristics (at high resolution) important for sturgeon
  spawning
• Continue determining status of sturgeon rivers
• Strategic approach to dam building
  o What is the cost?
• Development of criteria for evaluating populations
• Identify and understand disease issues facing sturgeon
• Determine recommended stocking rates
• Determine relative survival of fish after stocking
• Understanding ecological role of sturgeon
  o Feeding studies
  o Species interactions at varying abundance of sturgeon
  o Contaminant affects
  o Potential for suppression of mussels, gobies, lamprey, carp, mayfly
  o Compatibility with other introduces species (salmonids, etc.)
• Determine role of sturgeon that public foresees: pre- and post- education
• What is public value of sturgeon
• what % increase in abundance is needed and at what level might conflicts occur?

 

Pectoral Fin Group

Remaining needs/Questions

• 1. How do we define “population”? Adults mix in lakes but return to specific rivers
  to spawn.
• 2. Objectives/goals etc. will depend on the scale of problem (Great Lakes wide vs.
  single population)
• 3. How do we define restored/healthy versus remnant and in need of help?
• 4. How do we know when to stop “enhancing” or “restoring” populations?
• 5. We need to know what we don’t know.
• 6. Imprinting
• 7. Genetics
• 8. Standardized survey techniques and effort.
• 9. More money!!!
• 10. Education and Outreach!!!!