Great Lakes sturgeon may be 400 years old:Scientists rethinking how to save them

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bbookofjoe 3 days ago 24 commentsRead Article on cbc.ca

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aschla•about 11 hours ago

Kayak fished the St. Croix river last year, on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin, for smallmouth bass. Crystal clear water. Floated over several huge sturgeon, 4-6 feet long. The way they look, it feels like coming across a dinosaur. Thankfully they're bottom feeders.

Joel_Mckay•about 11 hours ago

Acipenser transmontanus are harmless sucker mouth fish, and lived in the local rivers long before our towns were even an idea.

They are usually strictly catch and release, but in a kayak could probably pull you a great distance. They are deceptively strong for their size, and a big part of local conservation efforts.

400 years is plausible, as they do live a long time when left alone. =3

raudette•about 4 hours ago

My fishing story - as a young teen, I "caught" a sturgeon on the Ottawa River (just outside of Pembroke) in a 12' aluminum boat. This was in an area where we'd typically expect to catch bass and northern pike - our fishing net was maybe the size of a large diner plate, and reeling the fish in might take a minute or two.

My father was in the boat with me. After hooking the fish, it took about 20 minutes before the fish was close enough that we could see it from the boat, and identified it as a sturgeon - it was the only time I'd ever caught one. This one was so much bigger than anything I'd caught before. I was using one of those jointed Rapala lures, and it had hooked the dorsal fin. I can confirm the sturgeon could definitely pull the two of us, and the boat, upstream - but not a great distance - just enough to move the boat around.

After about 25 minutes, my line snapped (it may have been 12 lbs test). We didn't really have a way of getting it in the boat in any case, and we would have released it anyway. This was probably the late 80s/early 90s - so nothing captured on a phone camera - it just lives on in my Dad's & my memories...

embedding-shape•about 5 hours ago

> lived in the local rivers long before our towns were even an idea

To be fair, the towns you're talking about are barely 200-300 years or so I presume? Most other towns in the world are probably older than those towns, and maybe even the fish if it's just 400 years ago :)

defrost•about 5 hours ago

To be fair the towns a North American might be talking about could easily date to 400 to 600 years ago at least - with signs of human occupation in the Great Lakes area going back 10-12,000 years before present, a good deal on the present lake floors.

awakeasleep•about 2 hours ago

Wild to imagine what the PCB concentration must be in a creature like that

azalemeth•about 3 hours ago

I know this is always an unpopular opinion but I just think we as a species should eat far fewer animals. Fish species have been really substantially negatively affected all over the planet by human activity, activities such as bottom trawling and line fishing are hugely destructive (the lines can be tens of km long!) and the whole marine ecosystem is under unique threats from climate change. We don't really know what we are killing and eating, and I am sure we will regret it later on scientifically.

I'm a lifelong plant eater and you can survive very happily, healthily, with lower carbon footprints at all stages of life with it. And if anyone says "protein" or DHA I'll talk all about the pentose phosphate pathway whilst munching linseeds.

superkuh•about 1 hour ago

Seems like you think people catch lake sturgeon to eat them. This is a very rare thing these days. Sturgeon fishing is almost always catch and release. This doesn't mean there aren't any fish killed. Any catch and release is quite stressful and might kill one. But people aren't just eating them and sturgeon are quite robust. And there's certainly no commercial fishing for them like the issues with ocean/marine ecosystems you're describing.

At least in Wisconsin rivers/lakes you cannot legally keep any sturgeon with the normal fishing license. You have to pay an extra fee to keep 1 (per season). And according to the statewide Wisconsin statistics only 5 sturgeon were harvested from the St. Croix River in 2025, and a total of 58 were harvested across the entire state.

barbazoo•30 minutes ago

Years again I was gifted a sturgeon fishing trip on the Fraser and I still feel bad thinking about it. In hindsight knowing how much we stressed and probably harmed that animal. What a cruel way to entertain ourselves.

ajsnigrutin•about 3 hours ago

Many fish can be farmed easily.

If we continued as hunters-gatherers we'd do the same with many other animals, but we instead decided to farm them so the other species can survive.

On the other hand, there are wild boars roaming my country in numbers that should be reduced, but somehow very few people want to eat them and they're causing a problems. Bear meat is a bit more popular, but killing off excess bears is a hot topic every year. Meanwhile horse meat is more easily available over here.

josh-wrale•about 4 hours ago

Why don't these fish die of cancer and old age sooner?

jkahrs595•about 4 hours ago

Because they don’t have vape pens and processed foods

functionmouse•about 3 hours ago

seems reductive

PowerElectronix•about 2 hours ago

It's usually becaise they have lower metabolism so their cells don't suffer as much damage as ours, and they probably have a lot of copies of genes that prevent cancer.

ComputerGuru•about 2 hours ago

Maybe. But whales don’t get cancer either, and whale metabolism is… impressive (well their resting heart rate is lower than ours but they grow orders of magnitude faster, to a point, and sustain themselves gorging on literal tons of food).

maxerickson•about 1 hour ago

Humans have pretty low selective pressure for cancer resistant genes (a tiny fraction of people get cancer before or during their reproductive years).

I wonder if whales survive to an equivalent of human old age (where we can be pretty fragile and still survive for decades).

UltraSane•43 minutes ago

I like the theory that whales are so big that their tumors get killed by tumors before they can spread.

bell-cot•about 5 hours ago

Better for the big picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huso_fulvescens Also, note the recent reclassification from Acipenser to Huso.

From the descriptions there, the article's estimate of 99% (reduction from historic population levels) is a severe underestimate.

axelthegerman•about 3 hours ago

Maybe just call them Lake America sturgeon and that should solve all their problems :-/