I Speak for the Fish: The hardest lake sturgeon dive in the Great Lakes

For two weeks each year, the St. Clair River hosts thousands of spawning lake sturgeon.

Hundreds of six-foot females plump with eggs and thousands of 4 to 5-foot-long males gather at the base of Lake Huron. In the span of a few weeks, they will arrive, group up, deposit millions of fertilized eggs on the river bottom and depart.  

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Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2025/06/i-speak-for-the-fish-the-hardest-lake-sturgeon-dive-in-the-great-lakes/

Kathy Johnson, Great Lakes Now

How are science and tradition saving sturgeon?

When the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians in Manistee, MI, decided to start a lake sturgeon restoration program, they started by hiring two recently graduated fisheries research biologists to help them set it up.

“I remember getting there and realizing that the scientific knowledge that I had was only a piece,” fisheries biologist Marty Holtgren said.

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Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2025/06/how-are-science-and-tradition-saving-sturgeon/

Great Lakes Now

I Speak for the Fish: Sturgeon vs salmon prioritizing native Great Lakes species

I Speak for the Fish is a monthly column written by Great Lakes Now Contributor Kathy Johnson, coming out the third Monday of each month. Publishing the author’s views and assertions does not represent endorsement by Great Lakes Now or Detroit Public Television. 

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Original Article

Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2025/05/i-speak-for-the-fish-sturgeon-vs-salmon-prioritizing-native-great-lakes-species/

Kathy Johnson, Great Lakes Now

Meet the people trying to keep a prehistoric fish alive

By Leah Borts-Kuperman, The Narwhal

The Great Lakes News Collaborative includes Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit PBS, Michigan Public and The Narwhal who work together to bring audiences news and information about the impact of climate change, pollution, and aging infrastructure on the Great Lakes and drinking water.

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Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2025/04/meet-the-people-trying-to-keep-a-prehistoric-fish-alive/

The Narwhal

Lake sturgeon added to endangered list, but things are looking up

Lake sturgeon, one of the largest and oldest species of fish in the Great Lakes, are in more trouble than we thought.

In December, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature downgraded its status from Least Concern to Endangered based on shrinking populations over the past three generations, which is between 250 and 300 years for this long-lived fish.

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Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2023/02/lake-sturgeon-added-to-endangered-list-but-things-are-looking-up/

Brian Owens

Sturgeon Restoration: Drawing in the public with a festival

This story is the fourth in a four-part series looking at sturgeon restoration efforts. 

Lake sturgeon restoration efforts are taking place across the Great Lakes basin.  

But what that restoration looks like is entirely dependent on location and other factors, such as whether or not any lake sturgeon remain in the area. 

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Great Lakes Now

Great Lakes Now

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2021/11/sturgeon-restoration-public-festival/

Kathy Johnson

A surgeon. Image credit: Brenna Hernandez, Shedd Aquarium

The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week kicks off on July 11. As the spotlight turns to that species, the Great Lakes can’t boast any of those sandpaper-y-skinned creatures, but coursing through its waters is another cartilaginous beast, the lake sturgeon. Here are five facts about the fish.

Jumbo-sized, just not in the teeth department

The lake sturgeon is the largest fish in the Great Lakes. It can grow to a weight of more than 300 pounds and reach a length of 9 feet. A lake sturgeon’s skeleton is made up of cartilage—like a shark—but they lack a shark’s fearsome allotment of choppers. The fish have a soft mouth and no teeth, relying on dangling organs called barbels to sense their meals of invertebrates, small clams and insect larvae, which are sucked into the mouth, sand and all. Everything but the food is then expelled through side gill slits. Instead of the shark’s trademark, and some would say ominous, fin, sturgeon have rows of scutes running the length of their bodies. These bony pointed plates smooth out with age.

Brontosaurus, stegosaurus, lake sturgeon

Lake sturgeon are considered a living fossil because the species has survived—virtually unchanged—for more than 150 million years. Sturgeon were around during the time of the dinosaurs. It hasn’t been easy, though. Today, because of overfishing, pollution and a loss of habitat, lake sturgeon are struggling to survive. For example, in Lake Michigan, scientists estimate only 5,000 adult sturgeon remain, well below 1% of the most conservative estimates of historic numbers.

Wisconsin is home to more than just Bucky Badger

Wisconsin’s Lake Winnebago is home to the world’s largest population of lake sturgeon. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been managing the population in that lake since 1903. Wisconsin Sea Grant lends a hand through its support for Fred Binkowski at the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has reared youngsters in his lab, assisted in the field and even extended his devotion to daily communication. Binkowski’s email address incorporates the word “sturgeon” instead of his own moniker.

Fine dining from fresh water

In the late 1800s, caviar made from the eggs of Great Lakes sturgeon was sold to enterprising Europeans who relabeled it as “Russian caviar” and shipped the delicacy back to socially climbing Americans eager to serve it at swanky functions. 

Sing a song of sturgeon

Using an underwater microphone on the Wolf River in 2012, a Wisconsin Sea Grant staffer was the first ever to capture the “song of the sturgeon.” Really, it is a slightly muffled clicking and booming sound (hear it here) that biologists think it is a way for a girl sturgeon and a boy sturgeon to call to each other during the spring mating season.

To learn more, check out this video and test your knowledge with a worksheet.

The post Shark and sturgeon synchronicity first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/blog/shark-and-sturgeon-synchronicity/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shark-and-sturgeon-synchronicity

Moira Harrington