UNE researcher James Sulikowski's netting of a 7-foot sturgeon in Saco River may be sign of the fish's comeback
University of New England marine scientist James Sulikowski, Ph.D., says that a 7-foot, one-inch, 130-pound sturgeon caught in the Saco River is a sign of the possible resurgence of the prehistoric fish.
The "monster" fish was one of 38 Atlantic sturgeon, along with two short-nosed sturgeon, that Sulikowski and his team of 15 graduate and undergraduate student researchers netted in the Saco River during a 20-minute period on June 5th while documenting the health and population of the species. The Atlantic sturgeon is considered endangered in some East Coast waters.
Sulikowski said the giant sturgeon, which is the largest recorded in the Saco since the 19th century, could be 30 years old. They have approximately the same lifespan as humans.
"We didn't know how we were going to get it in the boat," Sulikowski said. "I've never seen anything like it." His team of students worked four hours pulling in the all the fish, taking blood and tissue samples and tagging them before releasing them back into the river.
Although the species has been around for more than 120 million years, the bottom-dwelling Atlantic sturgeon largely disappeared from many of its habitats due to human activity.
In Southern Maine's Saco River, along which UNE's Biddeford Campus is located, the fish are thought to have died out completely by about 1950 due to pollution from up-river textile mills and aggressive fishing.
But Sulikowski's team first pulled one out of the river in 2007. He says the sturgeon have experienced a comeback because of a government ban on fishing the species and, in part, the improvement of the water quality of the river as a result of mill closures and efforts made under the federal Clean Water Act.
The numbers are very positive. "Sturgeon were essentially eradicated from the Saco river for 60 years," Sulikowsky explained. "Now we've been seeing the slow revival of them, beginning in 2007. And now we're seeing these huge sturgeon in our river system that we've never seen before." He added that the resurgence seems to be matching population increases for some other habitats observed by federal investigators.
But he added, a great deal of research is needed to answer many questions about the sturgeon.
"We need to figure out why they're here so we can protect them," he said. "Are they using it as a place to get stronger before they head out into an ocean migration or as a stopover on their way to another river?"
His team is still trying to determine whether the Atlantic sturgeon are spawning in the Saco, like they do in the Kennebec River further north in the state, or if they're just feeding there.
"We know that they appear to be coastal, utilizing river systems for large parts of their lives," he said. "In a sense it's kind of frustrating, because they are so charismatic. They're old, ancient-looking fish. But we really don't know much about them, which is unfortunate, because they've been around for so long."
The researchers are also studying short-nosed sturgeon, which are an endangered species and a much rarer find. In June 2009, Sulikowski and his students pulled up the first short-nosed sturgeon on record found in the Saco River.
Sulikowski's research on both species is being conducted in collaboration with the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the University of Maine, as a four-year project that began in 2010.