GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The granddaddy of the Great Lakes, lake sturgeon, swam long before prehistoric glaciers retreated and formed the five freshwater bodies.
"They've been around since the time of the dinosaurs," said Dr. Stephanie Ogren, vice president of Science and Education at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. "A really dynamic species."
For the past six years, the public museum and its partners — John Ball Zoo, Grand Valley State University and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) — have surveyed the lower portion of the Grand River, looking for juvenile lake sturgeon, which can grow up to seven feet long as an adult, sometimes living for 150 years.
"The idea is to get a baseline of the population, how those fish are surviving," Dr. Ogren said.
Taking boats out onto the river at dusk, the research team shone floodlights into ever-darkening water, looking for the angular fish.
But summer after summer, Dr. Ogren found nary a sturgeon in a survey area that stretched from the Fulton Street Bridge to Lake Michigan.
"Getting zeroes is still a data point," Dr. Ogren said. "It's a hard system to work in."
Two years ago, though, the team documented five juveniles. Last summer, they spotted fifteen, netting and tagging most before releasing them back into the river.
"Doing research on any sort of threatened species or endangered species is really hard, because it is a needle in a haystack," Dr. Ogren said. "There aren't that many."
In the early 20th century, lake sturgeon nearly went extinct when overfishing and habitat loss led to a dramatic drop in population, eventually leading Michigan to ban anglers from catching and keeping the threatened species, with a number of rare exceptions.
The remnant that remains in the Grand River — however small it may be — is a sign of the waterway's health and ability to sustain the prehistoric fish, Dr. Ogren says.
"It's an indicator of the success of cleaning up our waterways," she said. "[We are] being better stewards of the resource."
Through a $150,000 grant from the USFWS, the public museum and its partners plans to expand their work, surveying for adult sturgeon as they swim up the Grand River to spawn.
"It's really important to document this and then share it with all of our partners that are doing work throughout the Great Lakes," Dr. Ogren said.
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