The Great Lake Sturgeon

Restoration and Renewal: A Sturgeon Tale

n 93 LAURI KAY ELBING Restoration and Renewal: A Sturgeon Tale I can still remember the day I fell in love with the lake sturgeon. I was passing through Tupelo, Mississippi, visiting my little sister in October 2001 on my way to the National Rails to Trails Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. She was very pregnant with my first niece, Sienna, who turned out to be unabashedly obsessed with fish, wildlife, nature, and science before she could even talk. Since it was my first time in Tupelo, I wanted to go exploring. We went on an adventure to see what we could see, and struck gold. Beyond being the birthplace of Elvis, Tupelo is home to the Private John Allen Fish Hatchery, the first National Fish Hatchery, established in 1901. Among many past responsibilities, the Private John Allen Fish Hatchery has a restoration project to propagate three ancient species of fish that many biology geeks consider to be pretty cool: paddlefish, alligator gar, and lake sturgeon. My sister and I pulled up the driveway, passing an old antebellum home that once served as the hatchery manager’s residence, now a gathering site for a local ladies social club. We went nosing around the ponds on site before seeing a couple men working in a giant outbuilding. It was filled with various sizes of what I can only think to call a 94 n Lauri Kay Elbing holding tank, and looked like Sumo wrestler bathtubs. The gentlemen, dressed in unmistakable Fish and Wildlife green and brown, waved us in and began showing us and telling us about the fish they were working with as they moved some from a small tank to a larger one. As the sturgeon outgrew their tanks they would become agitated, needing more space to swim. They would be moved up to sequentially larger environments, ultimately being introduced to the Tennessee River to live out their long lives. One worker scooped up a tiny three-inch sturgeon and reached out his hand to give us a better look. That’s when it happened. “Would you like to hold it?” he asked. “Oh my gosh, yes!” I replied immediately. I was terrified; the little sturgeon was stunning to behold. The razor-sharp scutes were wrapped in soft shiny skin with striations in cool tones of rich soil. The fish wiggled and squirmed, then rolled over to reveal a bright white belly. Its tubular mouth protruded and sucked in the raw air, then contracted immediately into what appeared to be gray lips contorted into a silly little smile. I was hooked—so to speak—right then and there. What a fish. I was familiar with the lake sturgeon, since I had heard about their plight in southeast Michigan during my tenure on the staff of Congressman John D. Dingell. We were in the process of establishing the first International Wildlife Refuge in North America, and sturgeon recovery was one of the justifications for the existence of the wildlife refuge. Current sturgeon populations are about 1 percent of their former abundance, yet in recent years their story is also one of hope as they make their comeback in the Detroit River and Lake Erie region—with great thanks to Dr. Bruce Manny of the U.S. Geological Survey and Jim Boase of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among many others. Almost everything I know about sturgeon is by way of these two amazing scientists. It is their collaborative spirit, political acumen, and dogged hard work, infused with an infectious enthusiasm, that have propelled the saga of the sturgeon into the consciousness of the communities and its leaders up and down the HuronErie corridor. I find the sturgeon’s ancient features elegant—even beautiful. From the youthful sharp scutes to the softened features of the aged, their silky skin reveals geometric structures under armor, adding texture and dimension to a delicate monochrome study in grayish sable. Leave it to a liberal arts sort like me to see beauty in the supposedly grotesque. Lake sturgeon are an ancient species, genuine prehistoric relics and a keystone species that have thrived and survived unchanged for more than 100 million years, only becoming a threatened species in the Lakes Huron-Erie Corridor within the Restoration and Renewal n 95 last 100 years or so. When the first Europeans made their way through Lake Erie and up through the...