Saturday, December 4, 2010

Endangered Pallid Sturgeon

Over the past week I’ve been working on a story about a study at the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center. Researchers there, in conjunction with those at the University of Missouri and the Iowa State University, are developing models to help predict how the Missouri River sturgeon population may respond to climate change.

I started out by talking to USGS research ecologist Mark Wildhaber. He’s been studying fish – in one way or another – nearly his entire life. As a kid, he turned his parent’s basement into an aquarium shop, breeding and selling species he deemed interesting. His love of marine life was apparent, so I knew I’d get a good answer when I asked him to describe a sturgeon. You know, because radio listeners can’t actually see one.

After a few laughs – he said he’d never been asked that question before – Wildhaber came to this conclusion: A sturgeon is in fact kind of like a dog. A while ago researchers decided to use endoscopes and ultrasounds to determine if a sturgeon is male or female. That fact is not outwardly apparent for sturgeon, and researchers used to cut them open. But now when they use these methods on the fish, Wildhaber says the sturgeon basically just roll over, no struggling or squirming as you might expect.

“For people to look at them and think that they might be something mean and dangerous, they’re kind of like having a golden retriever,” Wildhaber said. “If anybody knows what a golden retriever’s like, it’s basically like that. They just sit there and do their thing, let you handle them how you feel, and go back to their business.”

Wildhaber says the dog-like sturgeon have actually inhabited the Earth since dinosaurs roamed around. But now their numbers are dwindling. Back in the late 1800s fishermen harvested the pallid sturgeon for caviar.

And today the sturgeon population is still feeling those effects. The sturgeon’s life cycle is a lot like our own: They live to be about 60 to 80 years old. That means only five or six generations are alive at one time. And that’s one reason Wildhaber says this study is important. Subtle changes won’t show up in a few years time with the sturgeon populations. He says the models will hopefully help predict what will happen many decades down the road.

“It’s very important to understand it,” Wildhaber said, “because obviously if you don’t understand it until after it’s happened, it’s obviously too late.”

--Courtney Flatt
Producer for Business Beat, Reporter and Web Producer

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Courtney, thank you for your story on the current issues about sturgeon and potential problems from climate change.
Marcia K Nelson
Outreach Cooordinator
USGS CERC
mknelson@usgs.gov