Spawn again: Sturgeon get sexy after decades acting the cold fish

ST. LOUIS — Three decades after the Missouri Department of Conservation took measures to protect the lake sturgeon, state officials have confirmed that the endangered fish are once again reproducing in the wild.

The prehistoric species of fish more than 150 million years old outlived the dinosaurs, but was brought to the brink of extinction within the past 50 years. In the 1970s, Missouri looked to protect the species and soon started a program to release farm-raised lake sturgeon into the wild. In late April, the department was able to confirm that the species is again reproducing in the wild thanks to a cell phone video taken by an angler near St. Louis.

“We’ve been getting some reports of what sounds like lake sturgeon spawning in several places, but this is the first time we’ve been able to confirm that’s what actually happening there,” said Travis Moore, a fisheries management biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The video is the first confirmation that lake sturgeon are spawning in Missouri for the first time in at least a century, Moore said.

Lake sturgeon can grow up to 10 feet in length and weigh some 300 pounds. They can live to be more than 100 years old, but it takes nearly three decades before they can start reproducing. The slow rate of reproduction makes the fish vulnerable to population decline, especially when human activity is involved.

Development and damming along rivers in the Great Lakes region and beyond contributed to the decline of the species in the 1900s. The lake sturgeon was also harvested for its meat and eggs, which can be turned into caviar. By the 1930s, Moore said, the species had nearly vanished from Missouri. In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said sturgeon were more endangered than any other species in the world.

“Most of the people today, unless they’re fishing the big rivers now, probably couldn’t have ever seen the lake sturgeon before even a few years ago,” Moore said.

Poaching also threatened the species. After sturgeon in the Caspian Sea — the traditional source of caviar — were nearly harvested to extinction following the fall of the Soviet Union, Missouri became one of the hotbeds for poachers looking to catch a piece of the international black market for caviar. Illegal caviar production and smuggling contributed to the decline of the lake sturgeon, as well as other species such as the paddlefish.

The Missouri Department of Conservation began raising lake sturgeon to be released in the wild in 1984. The state’s confirmation that lake sturgeon are again reproducing in the wild may indicate that its efforts to protect these species are working.

“What we want to be able to do is identify those spawning sites that we do have within our state, and be able to protect those,” Moore said. “If we can get to the point to naturally produce enough offspring on their own and stop stocking fish, we can have that sustainable population, we can take the species off the state endangered species list and classify it as a recovered species.”

It was a cell phone video taken by an angler that allowed the state to confirm that the fish are again breeding in the wild. Sam Hardy of St. Peters., was out with his girlfriend trying to snag a paddlefish on the Mississippi River north of St. Louis when he saw a sturgeon in the shallows.

“The closer I got, the more I realized it wasn’t one or two — there were 10 or 12 of these 60 to 100 pound sturgeon,” Hardy said. “I could reach out and grab them. It was insane.”

When he saw they were belly-to-belly, Hardy realized the fish were spawning. That’s when he started recording. Hardy’s video is the first solid evidence that the fish are reproducing to turn up in at least a century.

“I’m 28, and since I could walk I’ve been going to the rivers and lakes and never seen anything like that,” he said.

Missouri has not been alone in efforts to protect the lake sturgeon. Ohio is looking to reestablish the species in the Maumee River. In the Detroit River between Michigan and Canada, the construction of a spawning reef has led to a rebound of the species. In Tennessee and Alabama, lake sturgeon are being tagged and tracked as part of a 15-year-long effort to restore the species in the Tennessee River.

“Being able to confirm that we actually do have some wild fish spawning on their own out in the river is a huge step,” Moore said. “Especially if we can, over the next few years, determine if we have that happening in multiple places.”