These days, it is Williams who is rescuing lake sturgeon. When he checks his 120-foot live trap nets in Saginaw Bay, its not just catfish, whitefish and perch that require the combined strength of three crew members to heave-ho. About 25 times a year, the net also yields up to 50 pounds of lake sturgeon, all in one fish. Before we started helping the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with their study, there was a five-foot sturgeon that was there every time we lifted this certain net for about two months.Williams stated. We cut a tiny notch out of the dorsal fin so we could identify it; it sure liked that part of the Bay.
Learning where lake sturgeon are in Lake Huron and its river tributaries is the goal of a volunteer program between the Fish and Wildlife Service and eight commercial and tribal fishers from Saginaw Bay to the Upper Peninsula. Approximately 16,000 hours of time have been donated over the last two years by boat captains who take sturgeon as by-catch in their nets. Nearly 75 sturgeon have been caught so far.
The crews measure the sturgeons length, tag it, and note its location before releasing it. said Jerry McClain, coordinator of the multi-lake, international and inter-agency study, and fisheries manager for the Service in Alpena. We dont have the staff or the budget to get this information ourselves. And without the information, we would be unable to determine the status of the lake sturgeon in Lake Huron.
The lake sturgeon is one of Michigans oldest fish, having been around for 400 million years. Fossil records show 150-year old specimens measuring 9 feet and weighing over 300 pounds. Considered a nuisance and waste fish by European settlers, sturgeon were exploited and dried for fuel for early Great Lakes steamship boilers. Lake sturgeon were driven to near extinction in the late-1800s by over-fishing and loss of critical spawning areas due to dam construction on lake tributaries. Long-lived, they can take 15-20 years to become sexually mature; females then spawn only once every five years.
Pollution, over-fishing, habitat loss and poaching continue to threaten the lake sturgeon; and little is known about its life history. It is listed as a threatened species in Michigan and Ohio, and rarely encountered.
The information collected by the volunteer commercial fishers, along with a monitoring study of sturgeon outfitted with sonar tags in the St. Clair River, will go a long way toward preparing a recovery plan for this unique creature. said McClain. The lake sturgeon represents both the historic past, and, as a barometer of the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem, our future.
An appreciation dinner will be held the evening of October 6 to honor the commercial fishers who have participated in the Volunteer Project for the last two years.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 93-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System which encompasses more than 530 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 66 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resource offices and 78 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces Federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Aid program that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies. For further information about the programs and activities of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Great Lakes-Big Rivers Region, please visit our home page at: http://midwest.fws.gov


