Published: April 18, 2008 10:04 am            

A fish story

By Sean Bailey | Staff Writer

A group of 246 lake sturgeon found a new home in the Cumberland River, thanks to the efforts of the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resource workers and a group of local students. With the right combination of luck and environmental factors, the fish released Thursday might just live longer than the humans that found them a new home — lake sturgeon have been known to live up to 150 years.

The 350-million-year-old prehistoric species once thrived in Kentucky, but a sturgeon hasn’t been seen in the state since 1954, when Corbin resident Barney Frazier caught a recorded one, weighing in at 36.5 pounds. Frazier caught the fish at the confluence of the Laurel and Cumberland rivers, not far from the landing where Fish & Wildlife Resources employees released the tiny year-old lake sturgeon on Thursday.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources got help releasing the sturgeon into the river from three different groups of area students. Colonel Rick McClure’s ROTC students came with Ann Hail’s environmental studies class from Corbin High School to aid in the release. Students from the Whitley County Middle School archery and outdoor clubs also aided the release.

State ichthyologist Matt Thomas said a variety of factors led to the disappearance of lake sturgeon from Kentucky’s waters.

Lake sturgeon migrate up to 100 miles to spawn in shallow shoals, and construction of dams in the last 50 years has made that nearly impossible, Thomas said. Pollution, over-harvesting of the fish, and destruction of natural habitats have also contributed to the disappearance of Kentucky’s lake sturgeon, according to Thomas.

“At the turn of the century people would just catch them, and at first they found no use for them so they’d just lay them out to rot. Later they learned that they could sell the sturgeon’s eggs as caviar, and so they started to be over-harvested,” Thomas said.

Because the sturgeon’s eggs are valuable, poaching may someday be an issue for the survival of Cumberland River’s newest residents. But that is a distant worry for Thomas.

“It will take 20 years for these sturgeon to reach sexual maturity, meaning there won’t be any eggs to poach until then,” Thomas said.

Thursday’s release is just the beginning for the Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources’ project to restore lake sturgeon to the area. Early in May, the state will receive more eggs from rivers in Wisconsin, where lake sturgeon are abundant. The eggs will be hatched, and the fish raised for one year at a hatchery in Frankfort. In about a year’s time, another group of young lake sturgeon will be released into the Cumberland River.

“In the meantime, we will be monitoring this river system to evaluate survival rates. The evaluations all depend, though, on if we are able to even find the sturgeon. In this river system, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Thomas said.

Being from a prehistoric family of fish, lake sturgeon look more like something from the age of the dinosaurs than the average fish one might pull out of the Cumberland River.

The lake sturgeon’s skin is not unlike that of a catfish, smooth and scaleless. The fish have one other characteristic in common with catfish — the “whisker” like appendages called barbels that hang from its mouth. The four barbels hanging from the lake sturgeon’s long snout help find food, and also aid in holding food while the sturgeon’s tube-like mouth vacuums it into the fish’s stomach. Lake sturgeon are bottom feeders, so their diet consists of aquatic insects, snails, leeches and other bottom dwelling aquatic life.

Unlike catfish, though, lake sturgeon have ridges running up and down the back of its body and a long shark-like tail.

Lake sturgeon have been known to grow up to seven feet long and weigh in at 350 pounds. Thomas said if all goes well in 20 or more years, he expects the small 6-10 inch sturgeon released Thursday to grow to a healthy 100 pounds.

Thomas said Thursday’s release is just a small but important step in re-introducing the sturgeon to the state’s waterways. The project is going to last at least 20 years if not longer, Thomas said.

        

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