Saving Sturgeon: UWM's Water Institute Cosponsors International Symposium on the Prized Ancient Fish

On the west coast, their flesh is eaten in fine restaurants. In Asia, their unfertilized eggs are essential to caviar-exporting nations. In Wisconsin, tradition and the sheer size of the fish attracts a huge contingent of sport anglers. But the sturgeon, a bony-plated lake dweller that dates back to prehistoric times are teetering on the brink of collapse in the Caspian Sea, in Europe, and in many parts of the United States. Over harvesting, dam-building, pollution have drastically reduced their numbers particularly as poaching has become rampant in parts of the world.

More than 300 leading scientists from 22 countries will converge on Oshkosh and Milwaukee next week to share the latest research on sturgeon and see for themselves why Lake Winnebago's population of this ancient species has quadrupled in the last 40 years while they've collapsed in most other countries. Enforcing fishing bans, managing resources, and sharing research on the complexities of sturgeon biology are some of the topics that presenters will discuss at the 4th International Symposium on Sturgeon July 8-13. "When you rate all others states and countries in terms of a collective assessment of the work on sturgeon - research, resource management, aquaculture, conservation - Wisconsin is a leader," says Fred Binkowski, senior scientist at the WATER Institute and one of the symposium's coordinators.

Sponsored by the DNR, UWM's Great Lakes WATER Institute, the Wisconsin Sea Grant, the University of California-Davis, the Menominee Tribe, Sturgeon for Tomorrow, and Great Lakes Fishery Trust, the event will build on previous symposia at Bordeaux, France (1989); Moscow, Russia (1993); and Piacenza, Italy (1997).

Historically, lake sturgeon were found throughout the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basin, but dams, pollution, and commercial fishing have greatly decreased their numbers. In the Caspian Sea, which supplies 90 percent of the world's best caviar, poaching has flourished since the Soviet Union broke up in the early 1990s, and sturgeon stocks have plummeted.

Protecting spawning females is particularly important because troubled populations can take generations to recover. Female lake sturgeon cannot reproduce until they are 20 to 25 years old, and then they spawn only once every four to six years during their lifespan.

"Sturgeon are very good at surviving," says Ron Bruch, Department of Natural Resources sturgeon biologist in Oshkosh. "They can survive drought, climate changes, food shortages. One thing they cannot survive is over-harvest. They're very sensitive to too many of them being taken out of the population." In the Lake Winnebago system, the recovery is already under way, thanks to the DNR's 100-year-old management of the species. Also, public interest in protecting the fish has resulted in formation of the Sturgeon Guard, a group of volunteers who watch the river banks for sturgeon poachers during the spawning season.

"The Sturgeon Guard is one of the key reasons the Lake Winnebago system is the largest self-sustaining population of lake sturgeon in North America and one of the largest in the world," says Bruch.

It is one reason the symposium will be held there, although participants will also make field excursions to the Public Museum and the WATER Institute in Milwaukee, and to the Wolf River sturgeon grounds.

Another reason Oshkosh was chosen to host the symposium is that sturgeon spearing is deeply woven into the cultural fabric of the Winnebago region, said Fred Binkowski. An estimated 10,000 individuals actively spear for sturgeon each winter, many of them Native Americans who have a cultural connection to the sturgeon. Binkowski thinks that symposium participants will be receptive to the management model they'll see at work in Wisconsin. "I think that the majority of them will be going back to their respective countries with a clear understanding and a better appreciation for preserving the wild resource and not necessarily putting the emphasis on commercializing it."

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