Sturgeon holding their own in Blue Water area but are threatened elsewhere
Taylor Quintano came nose to nose last June with a fish that’s bigger than she is.
The Lexington girl got to pet an adult lake sturgeon during last June’s Blue Water Sturgeon Festival.
There are not many places in the world where people can view a sturgeon up close and personal. If they’re lucky, they can watch from behind thick acrylic as leviathan-come-to-life cruises through an aquarium display.
But people in the Blue Water Area not only can see sturgeon — they can catch them on hook and line.
One of the oldest species of bony fish, sturgeon are in trouble. The Center for Biological Diversity on Monday issued a plea for the federal government to list lake sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act, citing what it calls a 99 percent decline in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River in the past century.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists sturgeon as the most critically endangered species with 85 percent at risk of extinction.
According to information on the IUCN website, 27 species of sturgeon are on the organization’s Red List with 63 percent listed as critically endangered, the list’s highest category of threat. Four species might be extinct.
Beluga sturgeon, the source of the caviar prized by gourmets and the largest of all sturgeon, are listed for the first time as critically endangered.
But while most sturgeon species have murky futures, one of the few bright spots is the southern Lake Huron-to-Lake Erie corridor including the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.
Biologists estimate the local population at 30,000 — maybe more.
« In this area, we would consider it a large stable population or a medium stable population, » said Andrew Briggs, a fisheries biologist at the Michigan Department of Natural Resource’s Lake St. Clair Fisheries Research Station in Mount Clemens.
« We have one of, if not the largest, spawning populations in the Great Lakes. »
Sheri Faust has a relationship with sturgeon.
An environmental educator at the St. Clair County Health Department, Faust is also the president of the Friends of the St. Clair River, a group that has informally adopted the lake sturgeon as its mascot.
The Friends put on the annual Blue Water Sturgeon Festival, which will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 2 at the Great Lakes Maritime Center in Port Huron.
« This will be our sixth year, » she said. « The first year, we actually had it on a Sunday afternoon. We realized how big and how successful it was going to be, so we moved it to a Sunday. »
She said more than 6,000 people attended in 2017. Some of them took a cruise on the Huron Lady II to watch live footage of spawning sturgeon gathered in the area of the St. Clair River south of the Blue Water Bridge.
Others got to touch live sturgeon captured the night before by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service or interact with a volunteer in a sturgeon costume.
Faust said the festival allows the area to « capitalize on something that is unique to this area.
« Sturgeon are unique to the Blue Water Area because there are more here than anywhere else in the Great Lakes.
« We’re giving people the opportunity to see lake sturgeon up close, » she said. « There is no other festival like this anywhere else in the Great Lakes. It is a unique opportunity. »
The term « charismatic megafauna » was in vogue several years ago in wildlife management circles. In its simplest terms, it means « big animals that people think are cool. »
Sturgeon are charismatic megafauna.
« They are so enormous, » Faust said. « They are nicknamed the gentle giant. Just the fact that they are a prehistoric creature that really hasn’t evolved too much makes them special. »
Lake sturgeon can easily live to be more than 100 years old.
« Last year, it was really cool, » Faust said. « We had eggs in a tank that were retrieved from the St. Clair River, we had the juveniles from the St. Clair River and we had an 80-year-old female, so we had all stages from the St. Clair River.
« There are females that hatched during the Woodrow Wilson administration (100 years ago) that are swimming around in the Great Lakes. »
She said sturgeon bring tourists to the area.
« We do track where visitors come from for the sturgeon festival, and we know people come from around the country, » she said. « … Often people are staying overnight to attend the festival and spending money on the sturgeon cruise. »
Like humans, sturgeon don’t reach sexual maturity until their teenage years.
« One of the reasons they are hard to restore is they are a long-lived species,… but it takes a long time for them to reach maturity, » Briggs said.
« It might be 15,20 years before fish start to return to the spawning rivers. »
Males, he said, might spawn every other year, but females spawn less frequently — perhaps every four years or even less periodically.
They are fertile for a long time, however.
« There’s fish that could be over 100 years old that are still producing eggs, » Briggs said.
He said a single female might put out a million eggs, but life is not easy for the baby fish.
« Like any fish species, survival is very low, » Briggs said. « Probably only 1 to 2 percent of those are going to survive. That’s what people estimate. »
Lots of other fish and birds eat baby sturgeon, and Briggs said the spawners often are hampered by dams blocking their nursery streams.
« Here we have what most consider a large stable population, » he said. « A lot of that has to do with them being able to swim freely. »
But the St. Clair and Detroit rivers are not without their issues. Dredging for freighters has destroyed some spawning habitat, Briggs said. Artificial spawning reefs have been built in the Middle Channel and at Harts Light and Pointe aux Chenes in the main river using funds from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
A U. S. Geological Survey in 2016 found spawning sturgeon using the Harts Light and Poine Aux Chenes reefs in large numbers.
« The Middle Channel reef, fish were spawning on it when they put it in, » Briggs said. « It worked right away, but it got filled in by sediment. It’s mostly covered now.
« After that they did a lot more modeling to pick their sites. These new sites should not be filled in by sediment, and we are seeing sturgeon spawning on those sites as well. »
Dave Dortman, an angler who is a member of the Detroit-St. Clair River Chapter of Sturgeon for Tomorrow, said young sturgeon face a lot of challenges before they make it to a size where they are safe from predators. Many of the wetlands where the young fish could shelter are long gone, and hard vertical sea walls don’t offer a lot of cover.
Evening out the odds: Once the young fish reach a certain size, they are covered with sharp and bony plates called scutes.
« Even an 18-inch fish in your hands, it’s like a living rosebush in your hands, » he said.
Dortman and other anglers started the Sturgeon for Tomorrow chapter to promote fishing for sturgeon and sturgeon conservation.
There is a short season during which anglers in the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair can keep one sturgeon, from July 16 to Sept. 30, but a slot limit protects the younger fish and the older fish. The keepers have to be between 42 and 50 inches.
The Detroit River has a catch and release season from July 16 to March 15 — same thing in the St. Clair River — but other than a very limited spearing season on Black Lake near Cheboygan, and fishing and possession seasons on Otsego Lake and Michigan-Wiconsin boundary waters, sturgeon are off limits in other Michigan waters.
The slot limit, Briggs said, « is protecting about 80 percent of the fish out there. »
And most anglers don’t keep sturgeon they catch.
