Atlantic Sturgeon Project

SAVING OUR STURGEON POSTER CONTEST

CONGRATULATIONS LEROY PARKER OF MIDDLE TOWNSHIP MIDDLE SCHOOL!

The American Littoral Society congratulates Leroy Parker of Cape May County, NJ, for winning first prize in the Society’s “Save Our Sturgeon” poster contest. Leroy’s pastel on paper poster read, “It’s not just a piece of meat—it’s history” and communicated the importance of the Atlantic sturgeon to the region’s economic, natural, and cultural history. First prize is a coastal science field day with the American Littoral Society for the winner and his class plus a one-year membership in the Society. Leroy attends Middle Township Middle School in Cape May Courthouse.

We ran this contest in conjunction with our Atlantic sturgeon tagging project in Delaware Bay to focus attention on what citizens can do on land to help this unique fish that has been with us since the time of dinosaurs. The contest was open to students in Cape May, Cumberland, and Salem Counties. Students who participated viewed a presentation about the history and current situation of Atlantic sturgeon in the Delaware Bayshore region prior to submitting their posters.

Janaia Brown (grade 7) won 2nd place and Steven Muller (grade 8) won third. All entries are posted online at our Atlantic Sturgeon Poster Gallery.

If you would like to receive a copy of the presentation on Atlantic sturgeon, please e-mail eileen@littoralsociety.org. Even though this year’s contest is over, if you would like to help save our sturgeon by making a poster, we will be happy to add it to our gallery.

The Atlantic sturgeon poster contest and research project has been funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the NOAA Restoration Center, and generous donations from members of the American Littoral Society.

Delaware Bay Atlantic Sturgeon Project Atlantic sturgeon on deck

After battling cold weather and a rampaging Delaware River (after heavy rainfall), the Littoral Society’s Delaware Sturgeon Project landed, tagged, and released its first catch, April 19, 2007. It was a four-foot sturgeon, netted off the mouth of the Maurice River on the New Jersey side of the lower bay. This was after wrestling with high water and nets choked with debris brought down river by the recent downpours. Here are pictures of the work landing and marking such a fish.

The goal of the 30-day project is to gather knowledge about the status of this ancient fish, once common to the east coast’s estuaries but now so scarce it is under a 40-year no-harvest moratorium. Measuring the sturgeon

More about the project

The ancient and revered Atlantic sturgeon is in trouble, in such deep trouble that fishing for them has been banned throughout its entire U.S. Atlantic coast range from Maine to Georgia. This will give them a chance to repopulate the coastal waters where they once big and plentiful.

The American Littoral Society has launched the first season of what is a planned to be a multi-year study of the populations of these sturgeon in New Jersey waters of the Delaware River/Bay system. During April of 2007, the Society has joined forces with two experienced commercial fishermen to collect, measure, tag, and release sturgeon which enter the Delaware in the spring to swim upriver to spawn near Trenton, NJ. Fishing is with nets anchored to the bay floor near the mouth of the Maurice River, Cumberland County.

First Mate Rick DelSordo checks the sturgeon for existing pit tags Sturgeon will be measured and receive two tags, an external tag visible if the sturgeon is recaptured and an internal tag (similar to the tags injected into pet dog and cats as a tracer). Sturgeon five feet or longer will also get an internal radio tag so their movements in the bay and river can be traced.

A small sample of tissue will be clipped from a pectoral fin for genetic testing. (DNA analysis can help determine the relative abundance of sturgeon in the water bodies where they originally hatched.) Right now, scientists can differentiate among five distinct population segments of sturgeon - South Atlantic, Carolina, Chesapeake, New York Bight (the Delaware and Hudson Rivers), and the Gulf of Maine.

The sturgeon will also be tested for contaminants.

Watch this website as the study progresses. The Society will post up-to-date reports and pictures. Inserting a PIT tag

To learn more about Atlantic sturgeon natural history, status, and research: browse the web for entries under "atlantic sturgeon delaware bay river" (be sure to specify atlantic sturgeon; there is another sturgeon, the shortnosed, in these waters). You can Google "status review of atlantic sturgeon" to keep up to date with this NOAA/NMFS consideration about whether to put the Atlantic sturgeon on the federal endangered species list. Or Google "dewayne fox delaware sturgeon."

The Society will cooperate in its study with Delaware State University, National Marine Fisheries Service, NJ Division of Fish, Game & Shellfish, and Delaware"s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Funding for the project comes from the NOAA Restoration Center and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation"s Delaware Estuary Watershed Grants Program.

Releasing the sturgeon back into the bay

Saving Our Sturgeon Article