Scientists and students embarking on a census of Georgia lake sturgeon have found three females with mature eggs — an indication the armored “living fossils” may be reproducing in that state for the first time in a half-century.
Sturgeons' bone-plated bodies did so much damage to fishing nets that commercial fishers hauled large numbers out in the 1800s and left them on river and lake banks, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources recounts on its website.
By the 1970s, lake sturgeon had been wiped out of northwest Georgia's Coosa River basin — the only place where they were found in Georgia. “Because lake sturgeon take a long time to mature and then reproduce intermittently — every two to three years — we really need a robust population of varying size and age classes,” Hamel said.
About 330,000 fish, most about 6 inches long, have been released since 2002, Hamel said in an email to The Associated Press. Scientists have implanted tiny PIT tags, like the ones used to identify pets, in hundreds of fish over the past two decades. The tags let researchers learn when and where scientists caught the fish previously.
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