Sturgeon and Warm Water

Sturgeon and Warm Water

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
According to a report by the Associated Press, more than a quarter million sockeye salmon returning from the ocean to spawn are either dead or dying in the Columbia River and its tributaries due to warming water temperatures. I also recently heard about Sturgeon mortalities due to warm water. Idaho Fish and Game Chief of Fisheries Jim Fredericks. "Other states and other rivers have areas where fish go to find cold water. They will stack up at the mouth of a stream and become real vulnerable to angling. The water still might be cold but they are prevented from going on a migration up a system. Salmon and steelhead of course would be vulnerable to this. In those instances, and I can understand why other entities decide that it is probably appropriate to implement some sort of restrictions. You asked about the sturgeon situation and we have not seen any evidence of mortality. We don't do any sturgeon sampling as part of our assessment work once temperatures get to be about 73° and that's for the purpose that we don't want to stress them. But even one fish have been sampled and temperatures approaching that are around that area, we have not seen evidence of mortality associated with hooking and releasing. One thing about Sturgeon is that you can tell if they are stressed because they will have a reddish tinge to their stomach. It is basically blood vessels and so it's kind of a pock marketing of their stomach associated with that stress. You can see in warm waters when they get that. If they have a clear white belly then they are generally not stressed and we haven't seen that even with some of the warmer water temperatures, we have not seen that this summer.
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