Innovative research aims to prevent derelict fishing trap impacts

By: Dianna Parker, NOAA Marine Debris Program
from The Fishing Wire

Every day, commercial fishermen around the country deploy hundreds of fishing traps into ocean and coastal waters to land their catches. Far too often, the traps never make it back above the water’s surface, thanks to storms, tangled lines, or disturbance from passing vessels.

Now, researchers are testing innovative gear technologies and modifications to help fishermen hold on to their traps and prevent serious impacts from the derelict gear to the fishery, marine wildlife, their habitats, and the economy.

Blue crab pot with biopanel. Credit: VIMS

Studies show that derelict fishing gear is a widespread and persistent problem across fisheries in the United States. Lost traps are costly to fishermen, expensive to remove, and they continue catching valuable crabs and other commercial species – or “ghostfishing” – on the seafloor. Non-target species such as turtles also have the misfortune of wandering in the trap doors, baiting more animals. They eventually die without food or air.

But what if we could find a good fix, such as modifying traps so they don’t get lost in the first place, or making them easier to recover? What if traps were designed to be ineffective fishers once they become derelict? Four gear innovation projects launched last year through Fishing for Energy with funding from the NOAA Marine Debris Program are trying to do just that.

The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, College of William & Mary, Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Foundation all received funding through Fishing for Energy’s gear innovation grants to test different solutions to this problem. The projects range from testing different ways to rig lines, to determining which pot design has the best crab escape rates.

At SERC, researchers in the Chesapeake Bay area are evaluating existing crab pot bycatch reduction technologies, such as side-scan sonar, and getting feedback on that technology – including which ones should be tested in the field – from Maryland watermen.

In South Carolina, the DNR is comparing different trap float and line rigging configurations by intentionally running over them with boats to see which one holds up. The pots they retrieve over the course of the project will become artificial oyster reefs.

VIMS is employing commercial fishermen to test biodegradable trap escape panels. Lead researcher Kirk Havens wrote in 2012 that VIMS created an escape panel with a “naturally occurring polymer that biodegrades completely in the marine environment.” The polymer is made from bacteria, and it disintegrates if the trap is left in the water.

The researchers are also testing whether terrapin turtles will avoid certain traps based on what color the trap’s doors are painted.

In Washington, the Northwest Straits Foundation is testing five different Dungeness crab pot designs used in the Puget Sound to determine which one has the best escapement rate. Some traps use cotton rot cords that are designed to disintegrate over time and allow the crabs to crawl out, but it doesn’t always work. The group estimates that over 30,000 crabs are killed each year in derelict pots with designs that prevent escape.

Groups all over the country are working to address derelict fishing gear, as the harmful impacts become more and more apparent. These innovative research projects are aimed at preventing those impacts down the line.

Fishing for Energy is administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and is a partnership with the NOAA Marine Debris Program, Covanta, and Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc.

Costa Starts to Kick Plastic: Brand on Mission to Keep Plastic Out of Oceans
submitted

Daytona Beach, Fla. – March 5, 2015 – A swirling, floating, melting mess of plastic trash and debris roughly the size of Texas spins in an ever-growing orbit in the North Pacific ocean, known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Discarded plastic cooks in the sun’s rays, and oozes into miniscule pieces too small to be collected and removed from the water.

This plastic sea soup continues to grow and threaten the globe, with similar garbage patches spotted in oceans around the world. Already, more than one million sea birds have been killed as a result, and two-thirds of the world’s fish now test positive for plastic in their system.

Disposable items like plastic water bottles are huge contributors to the problem. Humans produce more than 200 billion plastic water bottles per year, with at least 10 percent ending up in the ocean.

Costa, a company committed to sustainable sport fishing practices and ocean conservation, launched a campaign this week to educate its customers about the growing ocean trash issue, and encourage them to kick the plastic habit.

“Our hope is that we can spark real conversations within our own fishing and outdoor communities about the grave dangers facing our oceans,” said Perkinson. “This isn’t some distant problem, this is an issue that directly impacts all of us in the sport fishing industry. Simple changes such as carrying a reusable bag to the store, drinking out of a permanent water bottle and recycling the plastic we do use can significantly reduce the amount of trash making its way into our oceans.”

The company produced a short animated video to more simply explain the plastic problem. To watch the clip, click here: http://bit.ly/kickplasticvid.

Costa also dedicated a page on its website to the “Kick Plastic” campaign, complete with news articles covering the issue, tips on ways people can reduce their own plastic habits, and showcasing people already making changes to clean up their acts. The hash tag #KickPlastic connects conversations happening on social media.

The company is currently evaluating its own operational procedures, and developing short and long-range plans on how it can reduce the amount of plastic it uses in its production process.

For more information on Costa’s Kick Plastic message, or to join in the global movement, visit http://bit.ly/kickplastic.

About Costa™

As the leading manufacturer of the world’s clearest polarized performance sunglasses, Costa offers superior lens technology and unparalleled fit and durability. Still handcrafted today in Florida, Costa has created the highest quality, best performing sunglasses and prescription sunglasses (Rx) for outdoor enthusiasts since 1983.

For Costa, conservation is all about sustainable fishing. Many fisheries that should be vibrant and healthy are all but devoid of native fish because they have fallen victim to poor fishing practices, unregulated development, lack of watershed protection or all of the above. Costa works with partners around the world to help increase awareness and influence policy so that both the fish and fishermen of tomorrow will have healthy waters to enjoy. Costa encourages others to help in any way they can.

Steelhead, Smallmouth Bass and the Importance of Public Lands

Today’s feature comes to us from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and explores a question that applies in many parts of the nation right now as both federal and state land management agencies feel the squeeze of tightened budgets.

by Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
from The Fishing Wire

Do you have a secret spot you like to access to fish your favorite run? Maybe your spot is accessed through public BLM or Forest Service land?

Image courtesy of Marty Sheppard/Little Creek Outfitters.

I have a few spots like this and remember a place I use to hike to that later was closed to the public. I remember thinking in frustration, “How could someone do that?” As a sportsman, outfitter and mother, I believe that one of the most important challenges of our time is to maintain public access to places we like to fish. I want my daughter to enjoy the same experiences and opportunities that I have had.

Some of the state’s best fishing for steelhead, trout and smallmouth bass occurs on rivers and lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service.

For example, the John Day River is the third longest undammed river in the Lower 48. It also is a stronghold for wild steelhead. The John Day is in my backyard, and, as a local fishing outfitter, I take pride in sharing this river with visitors and other anglers.

My husband and I have outfitted on the John Day River since 2001 and annually bring close to 180 people to our community, where they fish, shop, stay in hotels and eat at local restaurants. Anglers are mesmerized by the rimrock canyons, smell of juniper and solitude experienced on a John Day River float. These experiences connect visitors with something greater than themselves while at the same time support a major component of Oregon’s rural economy. Public lands are a boon for those who travel from across the country to enjoy them, as well as those who call these places home.

A couple years ago, I met a hunter who believed the balance between federal and local control of public lands in southeast Oregon was skewed in the wrong direction. As we talked about public lands in Oregon, he said, “We need to take back the management of our land from the federal government and have states control it.”

At the time I wasn’t aware of the debate over public lands management that was happening in Utah and other Western states, where legislative efforts are under way to turn federal public lands over to the states.

I replied, “Are you sure that is a good thing? What will happen to our wildlife and habitat? Will that impact our access to hunting and fishing?”

His simple response: “We’ll still be able to do all that.”

Image courtesy of Marty Sheppard/Little Creek Outfitters.

I couldn’t agree with him then, and, knowing what I do now, I maintain that our public lands should continue to be managed by the federal government.

Like many other Oregonians, I view federally managed public lands as my playground. Hunters and anglers come from all over to experience the high-quality hunting, fishing and solitude available on public lands in Oregon. As a professional guide, I depend on my continued ability to share the beauty of our public lands with folks from across our great nation. These lands and other federal lands across Oregon provide wide-reaching economic benefits to individuals like me and other Oregonians who rely on outdoor opportunities for income.

The federal government holds these public lands in trust so current and future generations can enjoy the rich beauty and resources that they offer. If ownership of these resources were transferred to the states, the expense of managing them could be prohibitive, leading to their eventual sale to private interests. This scenario would likely result in the widespread loss of public access to these uniquely American lands and waters.

Public lands rightfully belong to the citizenry, including Oregonians who depend on them for quality habitat for fish and wildlife, access to abundant hunting and angling and economic security. In an increasingly crowded West where open space is rapidly becoming one of the rarest and most valuable assets of the Western lifestyle, ensuring that these lands stay in the public trust is more important now than ever before.

To support sportsmen’s access to our public lands, please visit www.sportsmensaccess.org and sign the petition.

TRCP’s Oregon Field Representative Mia Sheppard lives and breathes being on the water and chukar hunting the breaks of desert rivers. Her passion to share this with others has inspired her to become a two-time distance-casting champion, teacher of fly-fishing, and advocate for women and kids in hunting and fishing. Mia and her husband Marty Sheppard (rod caddy) own Little Creek Outfitters, guiding fly-fishing trips on Oregon rivers. When she isn’t working for the TRCP she can be found standing in a river with her husband or daughter chasing steelhead or planning the next adventure.

About Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership

TRCP guarantees all Americans quality places to hunt and fish by uniting and amplifying their partners’ voices to strengthen federal policy and funding. For more info. visit www.trcp.org

Making the Connection Between Climate and Fisheries

There now seems to be no question as to whether Earth’s climate is warming, though whether it will continue long term and whether humans can do anything about it are still open for discussion in many quarters. But here’s an interesting take from marine scientist Jon Hare, director of the NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center Laboratory in Narragansett, Rhode Island, on how the warming is affecting many coastal species of fish-as reported by NOAA Fisheries Science Writer Rich Press.

An interview with NOAA Fisheries scientist Jon Hare

By Rich Press, NOAA Fisheries Science Writer
Follow Rich on Twitter: @Rich_NOAAFish
from The Fishing Wire

NOAA Fisheries scientist Jon Hare with a video plankton recorder-a device that scientists use to measure the distributional patterns of live plankton.

As the climate changes and the oceans warm, fish populations are moving in search of cooler waters. That is part of the reason why New England fishermen have been catching black sea bass and longfin squid in the Gulf of Maine in recent years, far north of the animals’ usual range. In other places, it’s the absence of a species that’s notable. Just ask lobstermen in the Long Island Sound, who have had little to catch since the range of this valuable species that once supported them shifted north in recent decades.

These changes present a number of challenges both to fishermen, who might need to adapt their business strategies, and to fishery managers, who need reliable information to set sustainable fishing levels.

Jon Hare is the director of the NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center Laboratory in Narragansett, Rhode Island, and he studies how physical conditions in the ocean affect fish populations. Hare is a fisheries oceanographer, and his work straddles two disciplines. “When I’m with fisheries people, I’m the oceanographer,” he says. “And when I’m with oceanographers, I’m the fisheries guy.”

In this interview, Hare discusses how fish are shifting their distributions in response to climate change and how those shifts ripple through the ecosystem. To adapt to these changes, Hare says, we need to increase our ability to forecast fish populations even as climate change drives them in unpredictable directions. That will require increased collaboration between fisheries biologists, oceanographers, and climate scientists.

You and your colleagues have been researching how fish respond to changing ocean temperatures. What have you found?

A number of scientists from NOAA and elsewhere have been looking at this problem, and multiple studies have found that about two-thirds of the fish populations on the Northeast U.S. continental shelf are moving northwards. Most of the earlier work was done on adult fish, but some more recent work has focused on the earliest life stages of fish, when they’re tiny larvae floating in the water column. We’ve found that in many cases larval distributions are also shifting northwards. So not only are fish populations shifting northward, but their spawning locations appear to be shifting northward as well. There are exceptions, but that’s the general trend.

Is the hypothesis that they’re heading north because they’re trying to stay within their preferred temperature range as the ocean warms up around them?

Yes, that’s the hypothesis, and it’s well supported by a study led by Malin Pinsky at Rutgers University. He looked at more than 350 species from all over North America and found that not only are fish moving, but that their movements track local temperatures very closely. Where temperatures have changed a lot, the movements on average have been greater, and visa versa. So at least some portion of the shifts are linked to temperature.

But we know from other studies that temperature isn’t the only factor. For instance, with summer flounder, a study led by Rich Bell at the NOAA Narragansett Laboratory found that changes in fishing pressure are also playing a role. In the 1990s, summer flounder populations were at low levels. Since then, a new management plan has been put in place that reduced fishing pressure, and today there are more older, larger fish out there. Those older, larger fish migrate further north, and so the range of the species has expanded north as the population has grown. In that case the northward shift is good news, and it shows that our efforts to reduce overfishing are paying off.

We’ve been speaking about the movement of individual fish species, but what does all this movement mean on an ecosystem level?

Each species responds somewhat differently to environmental changes. So as temperatures change, some species move out while others move in. Some are moving fast and some are moving more slowly. In any given location you’re shuffling the community of species in the ecosystem, and that creates a number of challenges both for fishermen and for managers.

For instance, many recreational and state-water commercial fisheries are managed spatially. In the case of black sea bass, to name just one, the total catch is divided among the states, with some states allocated more catch and some states allocated less. These allocations, however, are based on where the fish were in the late 80’s and early 90’s. But since then, the fish have moved north, and now New England fishermen are catching black sea bass in the Gulf of Maine. Those fishermen bump up against their catch limits very quickly, while fishermen from the Mid-Atlantic have to work much harder to catch their limit. That mismatch between the regulations and the distribution of the stock creates a lot of inefficiencies in the fishery.

When these regulations were designed, what happened? Did people not realize how variable things are?

We didn’t realize at the time how dynamic ecosystems are. People understood that ocean conditions varied from year to year, but not that things were trending in any particular direction. Today we understand that climate change and multidecadal variability is forcing the system in a particular direction, but those old assumptions are built into our management structure. So the question now is, how do we make our science and our management more adaptable to these changes that we know are happening.

If you look into the future for me, can you predict what our science and management will look like 20 years from now? What do you think is needed?

I don’t know what things are going to look like 20 years from now, but I can tell you what I think is needed. We need tools that will allow us to predict fish populations into the future under changing climate conditions. Climate scientists already have models that predict climate into the future. And fisheries scientists already have models that predict fish populations into the future without taking climate into account. We need to bring those two types of models together, and then use those coupled models when providing advice to managers. That’s going to require a lot more interaction between the traditional fisheries scientists, oceanographers, and the climate community.

What’s the cutting edge of research in this area?

On the climate side, the cutting edge involves scaling climate models down to the regional level. Today’s climate models predict future climate conditions over very large geographic areas, but fisheries are regional. What will ocean conditions be like in the Gulf of Maine, or on the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf? Currently we don’t have what are called downscaled climate models for this ocean region.

We also need to models that provide climate information in the 10 to 20 year time frame. Most climate models predict conditions 50 or 100 years out, and that time horizon isn’t very useful for managing fisheries. There are a lot of efforts underway to make reliable predictions during a 10 or 20-year timeframe. That doesn’t help when setting catch levels, which require a 1 to 3 year forecast. But if a fisherman is deciding whether to buy a boat or to invest in a permit to fish for a given species, or if a town is deciding whether to invest in infrastructure for a fishery, having reliable projections on the 10 to 20-year time scale could be beneficial.

The other cutting edge is on the fisheries side. Rising temperatures affect fish populations, and we can analyze those effects statistically, but what are the mechanisms that actually drive those changes? In other words, what is the physiological response of fish to higher temperatures? What is the ecosystem response when predator populations increase or prey populations decrease?

Those are the connections between climate and fish populations in the real world. When we base our models on those biological mechanisms, as opposed to statistical relationships, that will be a big step forward. A lot of scientists-both climate scientists and fisheries scientists-are working on these problems.

Atlantic sturgeon back in Cheaspeake Bay, or Did They Ever Leave?
from The Fishing Wire

By Karl Blankenship, Bay Journal: www.bayjournal.comMatt Bakazik (right) of Virginia Commonwealth University and Chuck Frederickson, a retired lower James Riverkeeper, work to free an Atlantic sturgeon from the gill net in the James River below Richmond where it was caught during a scientific sampling cruise on the James in 2013. (Leslie Middleton)

This Atlantic sturgeon was caught in Maryland’s Marshyhope Creek in late August 2014. (Dave Harp)
A couple of decades ago, a handful of scientists met to discuss the dismal state of the Atlantic sturgeon in the Chesapeake Bay. No researcher had seen a spawning sturgeon in years. Some doubted whether a remnant population of the Bay’s largest fish even remained.

Finally, the scientists began to debate what to do if someone actually caught a spawning female.

Some thought they should send her to a hatchery to preserve her unique Bay genetic makeup. Others thought they should tag and track her to see if she led to another sturgeon.

“We went back and forth about what we would do with the ‘last’ sturgeon,” recalled Dave Secor, a fisheries scientist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “That discussion has changed.”

Thought nearly extinct in the Chesapeake just two decades ago, sturgeon are turning up in surprising numbers and in surprising places. They’re also doing surprising things, like spawning in the fall – unlike any other anadromous fish on the East Coast.

Much of what was common knowledge 20 years ago is being cast aside as discoveries come at an increasingly rapid pace. “What we would have said a year ago about sturgeon, we wouldn’t say today,” said Chris Hager, a biologist which Chesapeake Scientific, a consulting firm, who has studied the big fish for more than a decade.

A few years ago, most biologists would have said that only the James River had a reliable, if small, breeding population. Now, some think the James alone holds a population that could number in the thousands. Next door in the Pamunkey, scientists last year documented a spawning population.

This year, Maryland biologists caught eight ready-to-spawn fish in Marshyhope Creek on the Eastern Shore. “And if you go by what the fishermen are telling us, there’s a lot more of them out there,” said Chuck Stence, a fisheries biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Jumping sturgeon have been reported in the Mattaponi which, like the Pamunkey, is a York River tributary. In Maryland, jumping sturgeon were reported in the Nanticoke River, upstream of its confluence with the Marshyhope.

Biologists expect to expand their sturgeon searches into those rivers next year. And they tick off other rivers they consider candidates for hidden sturgeon populations: the Rappahannock, the Potomac, maybe even the Choptank and Chester.

“If they are up in the Pamunkey, they can be anywhere,” Hager said. “They are not going to be everywhere, but you are going to have to explore it, and I think that is going to continue to go on for quite some time.”

Sturgeon are generally considered a big river fish. Yet they seem to be spawning in narrow parts of the James, and small tributaries like the Pamunkey and Marshyhope that, as Secor said, “you could throw a stone across.”

Not only are those areas relatively small, they are also relatively well-monitored compared with other Bay tributaries. So it comes as a surprise that sturgeon adults, which routinely measure more than 5 feet in length and are known for their habit of jumping out of the water, could have been overlooked.

“The thing is, you’ve got to look and nobody was looking at sturgeon,” said Albert Spells, Virginia fisheries coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who, in the 1990s, was one of the few who argued that breeding populations remained in the James. “We just were not putting enough effort into this animal.”

An Intriguing Fish

Sturgeon catch the imagination of scientists and the public alike. Sometimes called “the fish that swam with dinosaurs,” they are remnants of an ancient species and don’t look much like other fish. They have long, pointed snouts and instead of scales, are covered with armor-like bony shields, called scutes.

They are, by far, the largest and longest-lived species native to the Chesapeake. They reach maturity when they are 10 to 15 years old, and 5 feet or greater in length. They have been documented to live 60 years, and reach lengths of 14 feet and weights of 800 pounds.

Like other anadromous species, they spawn in coastal rivers, but spend most of their lives in the ocean. Colonial accounts are filled with stories about their abundance. Capt. John Smith wrote “no place affords more plenty of sturgeon,” and sturgeon meat was one of the Jamestown settlement’s first exports. But fishing pressure in the late 1800s and early 1900s, primarily for caviar, devastated the population.

The sturgeon’s slow reproductive rate, combined with other insults such as the destruction of spawning grounds (they were dynamited for shipping channels in the James) and water pollution (sturgeon are particularly sensitive to low-oxygen conditions) kept their numbers low.

In 2012, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed as endangered the Chesapeake Bay “distinct population segment.” At the time, it estimated that fewer than 300 sturgeon still used the James River for spawning. No other Bay tributaries were known to have sturgeon spawning, though the listing decision speculated that some spawning might take place in the York.

It now appears that one reason adult fish were overlooked is that biologists were looking at the wrong time.

As concerns grew that Atlantic sturgeon could be headed toward federal Endangered Species Act protection, there was an uptick in funding to look for fish, primarily in the James River. Initially, the biologists concentrated their search in the spring. They caught mostly juvenile fish.

Over time, they noticed that adults tended to turn up later, and farther upstream, than expected. In September 2011, Matt Balazik, a fisheries biologist with Virginia Commonwealth University, netted a female that had recently released eggs.

At the time, most fish biologists scoffed at the notion that sturgeon spawned in the fall. But since then, Balazik has netted hundreds of adult sturgeon on the James during the summer and fall, including females filled with eggs and males leaking sperm. That ended the debate. In recent years, evidence of fall sturgeon spawning has been seen in states farther to the south as well.

“A lot of people were looking at the wrong time,” Balazik said. “If we were looking just at the spring, we would say, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s nothing here.'”

Evidence for fall spawning isn’t new. Alexander Whitaker wrote of Virginia in 1613 that “The rivers abound with fish both small and great. The sea-fish come into our rivers in March and continue [to] the end of September,” and noting that the “multitudes of great sturgeons” came in last.

American Indians named August’s full moon the sturgeon moon because of the abundance of sturgeon in the rivers at that time. “It has been there the whole time that these fish spawn in the fall,” Balazik said.

In fact, Balazik and others believe that the James and other tributaries historically had – and in many cases still have – a distinct spring and fall spawning run. They suspect the spring run was historically larger, but that it took the brunt of intensive fishing. Fall spawners, by arriving later in the summer, might have missed fisheries targeting other anadromous fish.

“Historically, probably the spring run was the big one and the fall one was much smaller. But because of the overfishing, the spring run maybe hasn’t come back,” said Greg Garman, director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Maybe things have flip-flopped and now the fall run is the much bigger contributor, at least in the James.”

But Why the Fall at All?

What’s uncertain is why sturgeon began spawning in the fall. East Coast anadromous species – such as striped bass, shad and river herring – typically spawn in the spring. They follow temperature cues up rivers, and masses of fish arrive on spawning grounds at the same time where, historically, vast numbers of males and females would mix together and release eggs and sperm into the water.

One advantage of spring spawning is that biological systems are coming back to life after the dormancy of winter. Fresh plankton blooms fed by spring runoff give larval fish plenty to eat so they can grow rapidly. Conversely, in late summer and fall, biological activity in river systems is starting to slow.

But perhaps, some suggest, larval fish produced in this region in late summer have less competition for plankton and therefore have just enough food, and time, to get big enough to survive the winter.

“My gut feeling is that if you could get offspring to a certain size so they could overwinter, then it is sort of a head-starting program for the spring when the rivers become much more productive,” said Eric Hilton, who has been working with sturgeon on the York and Pamunkey.

The discovery of new populations also raises other questions: such as whether sturgeon in various tributaries are closely related.

Once, it was presumed that fish in adjacent rivers were closely related and would behave similarly. For instance, it was assumed that fish in the York River system were closely related to those in the James – perhaps even James River fish that simply strayed next door.

Initial genetic work, though, hints that Pamunkey sturgeon are “completely distinct” from the James River fish, said Carter Watterson, a Navy senior marine fisheries biologist stationed in Norfolk.

The biologists have only been looking in the Pamunkey for two years, but there is evidence the Pamunkey sturgeon also behave slightly different from James River fish. Adults, for instance, seem to return a bit earlier in the summer, said Jason Kahn, a fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Equally perplexing is that while scientists have tagged about 50 sturgeon in the Pamunkey, none have ventured into the adjacent Mattaponi, even though the two rivers merge to form the York.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science this year logged about 40 reports of sturgeon jumping in the Mattaponi. If those fish aren’t from the Pamunkey, Watterson said, it raises the possibility that the York River system could have two distinct populations – one in the Pamunkey, and one in the Mattaponi.

That, along with a potential breeding population on the Marshyhope, suggests that Bay sturgeon have several unique, small populations. Because of their small numbers, those populations could be at high risk – and each may need protection.

“If we find out that each river where we find sturgeon has a separate spawning cue as part of its genetic architecture, then I think we are obliged to try to conserve these populations at that level,” Secor said.

Further, he said, if it turns out that separate spawning runs on the same river are genetically distinct, they may each need to be treated separately as well. This is similar, Secor said, to how Pacific salmon that have distinct spawning runs on the same river are managed.

And there is reason to think there are distinctions between spring and fall spawners. Biologists have caught fewer spring fish on the James, but those that have been caught seem to spend less time in the river and are bigger. The smallest male caught in the spring is larger than 95 percent of the males caught in the fall, Balazik said. Some also think spring fish spawn in different areas farther downstream, but no one is certain, as too few have been captured.

Separate spring and fall spawning stocks would mean adult fish are in the river longer, and therefore need to be protected from other activities for a longer portion of the year. “It would completely change what that recovery plan looks like,” Garman said.

More Fish? More Eyes? Or both?

Meanwhile, the biologists wonder if the sturgeon population is actually larger, or whether they are just getting better at finding the fish, or might it be as some believe, both.

“That is a hard question to answer,” Hilton said. “Probably a little bit of each. We are definitely getting better at finding where they’re at, and when they are there. But my suspicion is that they are now more prevalent.”

If there are more fish, there are several factors that might have contributed to a rebound.

Years ago, Secor and colleagues developed a habitat suitability model for juvenile sturgeon that showed several years in the late 1990s had exceptionally good conditions to promote growth and survival for young sturgeon. At the time, they didn’t know any sturgeon were left to take advantage of those conditions. But any sturgeon spawned in those years would now be reaching maturity.

“That’s what I think happened,” Secor said. “Things got good in the late 1990s and we are seeing those adults coming back in.”

The fish also could be benefitting from a coastwide ban on sturgeon catches implemented by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in 1998, and even earlier bans on their catch in the Bay.

They also may have been helped from pollution reductions at wastewater treatment plants forced by the Clean Water Act in the 1970s and ’80s, as suspected spawning areas in many Bay tributaries are just downstream of major urban areas that for decades discharged huge amounts of sewage with little treatment.

At the same time, more effort is going into looking for sturgeon. More biologists, who are gradually learning to look in the right places at the right times – and with better techniques – may also explain part of the uptick in sturgeon numbers. The National Marine Fisheries Service has sent more grant money to states and academic institutions to look for and study the biology of sturgeon.

One of the biggest research investors has been the U.S. Navy. It has numerous activities in the Bay that could be impacted if they interfere with endangered sturgeon. The Navy has paid to implant acoustic tags in sturgeon and has established a network of 75 receivers in the Lower Bay to track the sturgeons’ movements.

The Navy also helped fund the search for more sturgeon, including recent efforts in the York River system, which turned up the spawning fish in the Pamunkey.

With all they’ve learned, biologists are confident they’ll find fish in other rivers. But, “It is going to take some time, some effort, some studying and probably a whole lot of luck,” Kahn said.

Still Threatened

The sudden proliferation of sturgeon findings doesn’t mean the big fish are free of threats.

They still face the risk of being caught in bycatch in other fisheries, habitat destruction, water pollution and ship strikes because they seem to move in deep shipping channels. Just this spring, two females that had recently spawned were killed by a ship strike in the James River.

But the early life stages of sturgeon are the most vulnerable. Although biologists have ideas of where sturgeon spawn in various rivers, they have not confirmed exact locations. In fact, despite the recent success in catching adult spawners, no one has confirmed reproductive success by finding sturgeon eggs and larvae in a spawning area.

“That is the next big step,” Secor said. “If we want to restore Atlantic sturgeon and make effective recovery plans, those early life stages are the ones that determine whether populations recover or not. That is where the growth and mortality rates are going to be highest, so that is the bottleneck. But it is the hardest stage to sample.”

There are reasons for concern. On the Pamunkey, when Kahn and colleagues deploy nets looking for early-life stages of sturgeon, they often come up with nets full of blue catfish, an invasive predator whose population has rapidly grown.

Whether they are a problem is unknown. “But logically speaking, there is no reason that a large predatory fish would not feed on a small fish,” Kahn said.

Failure to identify spawning areas also has limited protection. Hager talks of how a house recently was built near a suspected spawning area on the Pamunkey. Trees were cut down and a bulkhead built, both likely to increase sedimentation on the clean, hard, cobble river bottom. Sturgeon eggs are sticky, and need to attach to clean cobble bottom. Even a thin layer of silt on the bottom can keep that from happening.

“I think the populations in some places are probably so small that they are very delicate and they could be wiped out with stupidity,” Hager said.

And, spawning seems to be taking place on smaller waterways than what was once thought, which are more vulnerable to a sudden spike in poor water quality, Secor noted.

Still, the outlook for sturgeon is considerably better than it was two decades ago, when biologists debated what to do if they caught the last one. “If I were to pick a designation for the Atlantic sturgeon, it would be hopeful.” Hager said.

Spells, who repeatedly challenged his colleagues to put more effort into looking for sturgeon during the “last fish” debate two decades ago, is pleased by the new discoveries. “One of my objectives back then was just to get people interested in sturgeon and start spending some time looking.”

But even he is surprised at how drastically the sturgeon story has changed. “I’d be lying if I said that I thought we would know as much as we do today. I’m just happy that people are starting to look.”

About Karl Blankenship
Karl Blankenship is editor of the Bay Journal and Executive Director of Chesapeake Media Service. He has served as editor of the Bay Journal since its inception in 1991. To read more of his articles, visit www.bayjournal.com.