To spot a sturgeon is toglimpse a fish born of the Mesozoic era, more than 150 million years ago, whendinosaurs populated the Earth. Even as the planet and its bodies of waterunderwent tremendous change, the sturgeon survived, swimming and spawning inrivers, lakes and oceans. According to Peopleof the Sturgeon: Wisconsin’s Love Affair With an Ancient Fish, written byKathleen Schmitt Kline, Ronald Bruch, Fred Binkowski (of the Great Lakes WATERInstitute) and Bob Rashid, lake sturgeon originated in the Mississippi Riverand migrated to the Great Lakes when a glaciermelted about 14,000 years ago.
The lake sturgeon hasretained many of its primitive features over millions of years. It shares someof the same streamlined characteristics of a shark, another ancient animal,like an elongated body with a skeleton made of cartilage and a tail fin with anupper lobe longer than its lower lobe. The fish also lacks scales, and insteadhas thick, tough skin armored with bony plates called scutes. With thepotential to reach 300 pounds, it’s one of the largest freshwater fish in theworld, and it can live for a century.
As bottom dwellers, lakesturgeon cruise close to the bottom of a lake or riverbed, using barbelsfour“whiskers” at the front of the snoutto sense food. Once the fish findssomething of interest, such as snails, insects, leeches, crawdads and clams, itextends a wide, rubbery, tube-like appendage out of its mouth and sucks up themeal.
In spring, males andfemales swim up the river of their birth, sometimes traveling hundreds of milesto find the perfect rocky substratum for spawning. Fertilized eggs need anoxygen-rich environment to survive, so spawning in shallow, rushing water iscritical. According to People of the Sturgeon,“No more than one out of every 50,000 of the eggs released by a female islikely to survive and grow into an adult.”
Sturgeon were to theMenominee, Ojibwa, Oneida, Potawatomi, Sauk and Winnebago tribes what buffalowere to the Great Plains Indiansthe giant fish was both honored and hunted.Imagine the gratitude and celebration when, after a long, freezing winter whenfood was scarce, the sturgeon spawning migration would signal a welcome periodof abundance. The Menominee name for the fish is Namaew (Nama’o), which means“first fish” or “original fish” and has spiritual significance in the tribe’screation story.
Early European settlersweren’t impressed with the sturgeon at first glance. They didn’t want to eatwhat they saw as an ugly, mud-dwelling fish; plus its sharp scutes tore uptheir fishing nets, and rumors spread that the giant fish ate the eggs of otherfish, including those of valuable commercial species such as trout andwhitefish. Considered both a nuisance and a menace, lake sturgeon were “clubbedto death, burned for fuel, and plowed into fields for compost.”
It wasn’t until the lasthalf of the 19th century that settlers realized the economic value of the lakesturgeon and started intensively catching them for, among other things, theireggs, which can be made into caviar. Dams built for logging and energy blockedsturgeon spawning migrations and isolated their populations. Pollution andoverfishing were added to the mix, and by the 1900s Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon populations crashedto about 10% of what they had been before European settlement.
The foundation of theworld’s first sturgeon management program was developed in 1903 when Wisconsin established amodest size limit of 8 pounds, followed by closure of the harvest season in 1915.Legal harvest of sturgeon began again in 1931 on the Lake Winnebago system with the first regulated spearing season. Sincethen the Department of Natural Resources, university researchers, statefisheries biologists and a persevering group of sturgeon enthusiasts known asSturgeon for Tomorrow has developed strong regulations to better protect thelake sturgeon populations. The world’s largest and healthiest lake sturgeonpopulation flourishes in Lake Winnebago, and the fish is also being restored inother parts of its original range in Wisconsin.
