Lake sturgeon return to North Carolina

ASHEVILLE – Lake sturgeon made a big-time North Carolina comeback Oct. 21 as more than 3,000 fish were released into the French Broad River near Hot Springs. The fish, which have been absent from the state's waters for more than half a century, should now help with monitoring of water quality.

“These fish can grow to 200 pounds and 9 feet long. It’s not every day you’re able to help bring back such a magnificent creature,” said Steve Fraley, aquatic biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. “This is a proud day for North Carolina as part of our natural heritage is being restored.”

Lake sturgeon are native to central North America, found in the Mississippi, Great Lakes and Hudson Bay basins - a historical range sweeping from the Deep South to well into Canada. Despite the wide distribution, during the 20th century lake sturgeon declined across their range as a result of overfishing, habitat loss, dams and pollution. The last suspected record of the fish in North Carolina was from Hot Springs in 1946.

Stephen Jackson, manager at Edenton National Fish Hatchery, said sturgeon really started to suffer in the 1940s.

"During World War II, Americans lost access to Russian caviar," Jackson said. "So they turned to domestic sturgeon caviar, which really decimated the population."

Though not on the federal endangered species list, lake sturgeon are considered threatened or endangered in 19 of the 20 states in its range.

“Placing these fish in the French Broad River is the latest in a multistate effort to return this fish to its native range,” Jackson said. “The Fish and Wildlife Service has helped raise lake sturgeon for other states, and now I’m proud we’ve done it for my home state.”

Efforts to bring the lake sturgeon back to the Southern Appalachians began in 1992, when 3,500 were stocked into the upper Clinch River. The restoration effort ramped up in 2000, when biologists began annual stocking of rivers in east Tennessee. Hand-in-hand with the stocking, biologists are tracking lake sturgeon movements in the Tennessee River basin, to gain a deeper understanding of how and where the fish travel and what river habitats they prefer.

The fish stocked at Hot Springs are tagged with an identifying mark by removal of two of the bony plates. This does not harm the fish, and it allows biologists to know the fish’s origin when it is caught or sampled. When re-caught during sampling at a larger size, some sturgeon receive radio transmitters, emitting a signal biologists can pick up from a boat or shore and use to track the fish’s movement.

The sturgeon family of fish has been around for 136 million years, pre-dating Tyrannosaurus rex. This prehistoric pedigree is evident in their distinctive bodies, which are lined with bony plates instead of the fish scales we typically think of. They’re bottom-dwelling fish, feeding on insect larvae, crayfish, leeches and other stream-bottom animals.

Jackson said sturgeon are very much an indicator species, and can only survive in clean waters. If the sturgeon continue to thrive, he said, that will be an indication that the French Broad and other rivers where they have been introduced are continuing to get cleaner.

Lake sturgeon are slow-growing, long-lived fish, with females living up to 150 years. The females don’t begin reproducing until between 14 and 33 years, and then only lay eggs every three to 12 years. Being slow to develop and reproducing so infrequently makes it a challenge for the fish to bounce back from population declines, he said.

Though the released fish came from Edenton National Fish Hatchery in eastern North Carolina, the French Broad River is the last stop in their multistate journey. The eggs were laid and fertilized in April in Wisconsin, then carried to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Warm Springs National Fish Hatchery in Georgia where the young fish hatched and grew for 30 days.

In June, those 30-day-old fish were taken to Edenton National Fish Hatchery which had space to grow them large enough for stocking. By the time they were put in the French Broad River, they were 7.5-inches long.

The Wisconsin Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been a key partner by providing fish for southeastern stocking efforts, coordinated by the Southeastern Lake Sturgeon Working Group, which includes Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Aquarium, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The lake sturgeon cannot be fished, and it will take many years to determine if the populations are healthy enough to remove them from the threatened or endangered status.

Anglers who catch a lake sturgeon are asked to report their catch to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission at 828-550-0064.