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Sturgeon habitat endangered as well as fish

Posted on by david

Atlantic sturgeon added to endangered species list

Illegal to catch, sturgeon get more federal protection

The Atlantic sturgeon, one of the world’s oldest surviving species of fish, became the newest addition to the federally protected endangered species list last week, a designation that could lead to additional protections for the fish’s habitat.

Sturgeon have been illegal to fish or keep since 1998, but dangers still remain, including unintended catching, dams that block spawning zones, poor water quality, dredging of spawning areas and vessel strikes.

See the dozens of unique artificial fish habitat models, fish attractors and fish cover used at fishiding.com, the leader in  science based, proven, fish protection.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, declared the Chesapeake Bay, New York Bight, Carolina and South Atlantic sturgeon subspecies of Atlantic sturgeon as endangered. The Gulf of Maine sturgeon was listed as threatened.

A federal study of the fish in 2007 revealed populations far below historic levels. Before 1890, an estimated 180,000 adult female sturgeon spawned in the Delaware River. Today, that total is believed to be fewer than 300, according to NOAA. Historically known to spawn in 38 rivers along the Atlantic coast, today sturgeon spawn in only 20 of those rivers.

The designation followed a fall 2009 petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

NOAA determined the petition had merit in January 2010 and proposed that in October 2010 the species be listed as endangered. The agency held six public hearings and received comments from 119 people or organizations, some of which opposed the designation.

“The Atlantic sturgeon survived the Ice Age but is now threatened with extinction,” council senior attorney Brad Sewell said in a release. “Despite a more than decade-old ban on fishing for the sturgeon, a host of other threats — including ongoing catch in other fisheries, habitat damage, pollution and the growing effects of climate change — have proved too challenging for the species to recover. By recognizing the fish’s endangered status, the federal government is giving this remarkable fish a fighting chance to live on into the 21st century.”

Harvested since the 1870s for their caviar, Atlantic sturgeon can live past 60 years, grow to 14 feet and weigh 800 pounds, according to the release.

Technically a bony fish, the sturgeon also share many characteristics with sharks and fin fish, said David Secor, a fisheries biologist at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons.

“They really are amazing looking fish,” he said.

Though the fish have not spawned in state waters for decades, it is known to still reproduce in the James River in Virginia and travel north into the bay and is sometimes found, though rarely, in the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, Secor said.

“Many in the Chesapeake are visiting from other rivers and states,” he added. “They tend to be fairly far-flung.”

The primary threats to Atlantic sturgeon are fisheries, where the fish can get caught up in nets and end up as part of the harvest’s bycatch, or unintentional catch. Listing the fish as an endangered species could help reduce the number of sturgeon killed in commercial nets, Secor said.

“Sturgeon tend to poke their noses into all kinds of nets,” including gill and pound nets and even crab pots, Secor said

The designation could affect the monk fish and dogfish fisheries in particular, he added.

Secor said the designation “maybe was warranted” since bycatching is such a threat to the species, but as a part of the current efforts to restore the Atlantic sturgeon population, he described himself as “ambivalent” about the listing.

He said the ban on fishing sturgeon has been effective and that there is evidence the fish’s numbers are rebounding in the Hudson River in eastern New York and rivers throughout New England.

“South of the Chesapeake, it’s not looking too good,” Secor said.

But he called the Atlantic sturgeon a “resistant species,” as evidenced by their prehistoric descendants.

“I like to think they swam with dinosaurs,” he said.

The good news for the Atlantic sturgeon is that “they are all over the place,” Secor said.

But the bad news is that water quality in the Chesapeake Bay is so poor that the oxygen-hungry fish has a very hard time surviving there. Secor described the Atlantic sturgeon as one of the “most sensitive species of fish to low oxygen.”

jnewman@somdnews.com

Sturgeon need more fish habitat

Posted on by david

Environment File

JORDAN VERLAGE/St. Albert Gazette

JORDAN VERLAGE/St. Albert Gazette
Scientists say some 600 fish found dead this week by the sewer outfall closest to the city’s cenotaph likely died of winterkill from a lack of oxygen in the Sturgeon River.

Science team spots fish kill

Local scientists had their sleuthing hats on this week after hundreds of silvery fish turned up dead in the Sturgeon River. See the dozens of unique artificial fish habitat models, fish attractors and fish cover used at fishiding.com, the leader in  science based, proven, fish protection.

Public works staff and researchers from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) recovered several sack-loads of dead fish from a sewer outfall by St. Albert Place Thursday morning.

A man walking a dog first spotted the fish last weekend, says Laurie Hunt, the associate chair of biological science technology at NAIT who is running a 10-year study of the Sturgeon River. The unidentified man alerted a team of NAIT researchers who happened to be taking water samples on the river at the time, and they investigated.

The team found roughly 600 dead fish by the sewer outfall closest to the city’s cenotaph, Hunt says — some floating in the open water, others frozen under the ice. “The whole little channel was full of them.” While most were minnow-sized sticklebacks, there were also a fair number of larger fish such as northern pike and white sucker.

Hunt told city officials on Wednesday, who in turn called in Alberta Fish and Wildlife fisheries biologist Daryl Watters.

Watters, who examined the site, says the fish appear to be victims of winterkill — a relatively common occurrence in shallow rivers like the Sturgeon.

“It’s unfortunate, since you don’t want to see young small fish like that taken out before they can contribute, but it happens.”

Winterkill happens when fish crowd into too small an area, such as the small bit of open water by most outfalls, use up all the oxygen there and die. Readings taken by the NAIT team suggest that the water next to the outfall has much more oxygen in it than that in the rest of the Sturgeon, which may have attracted the fish.

The NAIT team has collected the fish with the province’s permission for further study, Hunt says. The team is studying the sex ratios of fish in the Sturgeon to check for signs of gender-bending pollutants.

“We didn’t have a lot of success catching fish this summer,” she says, but this discovery has handily solved that problem.

Winterkill incidents like this illustrate the importance of having diverse fish habitat, Hunt says — if the Sturgeon had a better mix of shallow and deep spots, these fish may have had a better chance of surviving.

“It also emphasizes the importance of beavers,” she adds, as their dams create deep, oxygenated pools in which fish can survive over winter.

 

Atlantic sturgeon listed as endangered species

Posted on by david

By , Published: February 1

Atlantic sturgeon, one of the most expensive and imperiled fish in the world, made it onto the endangered species list Wednesday.

Once plentiful, sturgeon populations in the U.S. and across the world have plummeted since humans targeted them for their caviar.

Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service listed the New York Bight, Chesapeake Bay, Carolina and South Atlantic populations as endangered, and the Gulf of Maine population as threatened. The move could lead to new protections for the fish’s habitat along the East Coast. See the dozens of unique artificial fish habitat models, fish attractors and fish cover used at fishiding.com, the leader in  science based, proven, fish protection.

“Atlantic sturgeon have been teetering on the brink of extinction since they were severely depleted by fishing in the late 1800s,” said Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. She added that now these populations will enjoy “the full force” of Endangered Species Act, “I am more optimistic than ever before that future generations will be able to see these ancient fish thriving once again off the shores of the East Coast.”

Some species of American sturgeon that have declined are now making a comeback. TheTennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga has led an effort to reintroduce 115,000 lake sturgeon into the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers over the past decade. Sturgeon on those waters went extinct in the 1970s.

Anna George, the aquarium’s director of conservation, said people can identify with sturgeon because their life history is closer to that of humans than most fish.

“They don’t reproduce until they’re teenagers, and they can live for a really long time,” she said, noting that lake sturgeon live to be as old as 150.

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