# Sturgeon search Saginaw River Watershed



## Hamilton Reef (Jan 20, 2000)

Sturgeon search Scientists expect to find prehistoric fish spawning in Saginaw River Watershed

http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1108658733154620.xml

Thursday, February 17, 2005, By Jeff Kart, Times Writer

A prehistoric species of gigantic fish may be spawning in the Saginaw River watershed after a long period of decline. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to begin a three-year project next month to see if lake sturgeon, a species native to the area, are swimming in from Saginaw Bay and up the Saginaw River to drop eggs in the Tittabawassee and Cass rivers. 

Sturgeon, listed by the state as threatened, can grow to be 9 feet long and weigh up to 300 pounds. Females can live to be 150 years old.

"What we're trying to determine is whether or not sturgeon are using any part of the Saginaw River watershed for spawning," said James C. Boase, fishery biologist for the Wildlife Service in Alpena. 

The results will be used by the Wildlife Service and Michigan Department of Natural Resources in ongoing efforts to rehabilitate lake sturgeon populations throughout the Great Lakes. 

In decades to come, habitat improvement projects to increase sturgeon populations in the Saginaw River watershed could bring tourist dollars to the Bay City area, from spectators wishing to view spawning runs and, eventually, fishermen hoping to land one of the living fossils. 

There is already anecdotal evidence that sturgeon are in the river system. 

The DNR receives one or two reports a year of sturgeon being caught in the watershed, typically in the spring, when spawning occurs, said James P. Baker, fisheries unit manager for the DNR in Bay City. 

"It's usually a gentleman who's very excited and has had an encounter with a fish he could not stop," Baker said. 

"Hooking a sturgeon is like hooking a John Deere tractor. They just keep going." 

Since 1998, about 350 sturgeon reportedly have been caught in commercial fishing nets in the bay, Boase said. 

While sturgeon are considered a game fish, by law they have to be released if caught in the Saginaw River watershed, Boase said. 

Limited harvesting is permitted in Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River, which has a population of about 25,000 sturgeon, Boase said. 

Sturgeon spawning in the local watershed are most likely living in the Saginaw Bay, or swimming north from the Port Huron and Lake St. Clair area, he said. Other significant populations are in the Black Lake area near Cheboygan and Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, Boase said. 

The Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network is funding the three years of study, providing $90,000 to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which will be matched by at least $45,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, said Michael T. Kelly, a WIN administrator from Auburn. 

Federal workers will fish for sturgeon with baited hooks in Wickes Park in Saginaw, beginning in mid-to-late March. Fish that are caught will be tagged. 

Egg mats also will be placed in two likely spawning areas - below the Dow Chemical Co. dam on the Tittabawassee River in Midland and below the Frankenmuth dam on the Cass River in downtown Frankenmuth. 

"These fish will have to go by Wickes Park to go up the Tittabawassee, where we think they're dropping their eggs," Kelly said. 

The mats will be checked once a week. The project will continue until the end of April, and resume in 2006 and 2007. 

Sturgeon, the largest fish in the Great Lakes, date back to the time of the dinosaurs, but their numbers have dwindled to less than 1 percent of their former abundance. 

In the 1800s, commercial fishermen slaughtered sturgeon as a nuisance fish that destroyed nets for white fish and lake trout. Today, people still eat sturgeon in areas where harvesting is allowed, such as Canada, where sturgeon fries are popular, and sturgeon eggs are sold as caviar. 

Kelly said WIN decided to fund the project because returning a native species to the watershed is a step toward delisting the Saginaw River and Bay as a federal "Area of Concern" for pollution issues. 

Sturgeon live to be so old that some of the fish still in the system may have been using the watershed before it became degraded by industrial and urban pollution, Boase said. 

Any habitat improvements made for sturgeon also could help populations of walleye and other species and bring in tourist dollars, Kelly said. 

A university study in Wisconsin found that Lake Winnebago's sturgeon population brings $3 million annually to the region's economy, according to media reports. 

But Baker cautioned that people shouldn't get their hopes up. Female sturgeon don't spawn until they're 25 years old, and then they only spawn about once every five years. 

So any habitat improvements, involving removing dams or creating "fishways" around dams that allow sturgeon to reach other spawning areas upstream, will take decades to show results, Baker said. 


- Jeff Kart covers the environment and politics for The Times. He can be reached at 894-9639.


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