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Adopt-A-Fish update – April 20, 2006 in this week's weather By DAVE FULLER Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks "I wish I had your job!" That's a phrase I hear often as we pull up to a boat ramp on a fine summer day. But I sure didn't hear that this week because anybody in his or her right mind was nowhere near a boat ramp on the Missouri or Yellowstone rivers. Large waves, 40 mph north winds and a rain-sleet-snow mixture reminded me of the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch or some of the Rock Creek walleye tournaments that I have participated in. These elements, compounded with large numbers of cottonwoods and other debris on the river bottom, made drifting nets very difficult and challenged even the most seasoned veterans. All in all, it was a tough week to be a biologist in the Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-A-Fish program. This week marks the beginning of an annual event called "The Great Pallid Sturgeon Hunt." This is where researchers from Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey team up to capture adult pallid sturgeon to take to the hatchery. These sturgeon will be spawned so that their eggs can be hatched and their young can be raised in the hatchery and then be stocked back into the wild. Since this endangered species is having trouble reproducing and recruiting young into adulthood on its own under existing habitat conditions, pallid sturgeon rely on this stocking program in order to replenish their population until habitat conditions are improved. As a precautionary measure and since hatcheries just don't have the space for all of them, several hatcheries raise these sturgeon. We don't want all our eggs in one basket (pun intended) in case something happens to one hatchery. Facilities in Bozeman, Miles City, Fort Peck, North Dakota and South Dakota will all receive some of these eggs after the prehistoric adults have been artificially spawned. After the eggs hatch, they will be released into the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers as larvae, fingerlings, and yearlings. How are we sure it's a pallid sturgeon and not a shovelnose? A pallid sturgeon's inner barbells are shorter than their outer ones and the insertion of the barbells form a slight half moon shape with the inner barbells more forward than the outer ones. In contrast, the more abundant shovelnose sturgeon has barbells of relatively equal length and the insertion points form a straight line. The pallid sturgeon that are not stocked as larvae will generally have a colored mark on the bottom of their snout, called an elastomere tag. These are easily seen for four or five years but become much tougher to spot as the fish grows. However, if an angler is unsure please release any sturgeon immediately. There are approximately 150 wild adult pallid sturgeon left in the Missouri River between Fort Peck Dam and Lake Sakakawea and in the Yellowstone River. Without any habitat alterations or the assistance of a stocking program, the species would most likely go extinct from this area of the river around the year 2018. How soon is that? Let's just say that's before some of the students that have adopted these fish in the Adopt-A-Fish program will graduate from college. That's not too far away. One thing we're doing as biologists, and Adopt-A-Fish students are doing in the program, is learning as much as we can about pallid sturgeon. The more we learn, the better the chances that we can help this endangered species. Weekly updates on our radio-implanted fish can be found on the Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-A-Fish home page with updates posted Thursday mornings in April and May. Just click on the Find your Fish button on the home page. School classrooms, youth fishing clubs and home schoolers can sign up for the program and adopt and name two fish. Just go to the Web site and click on the How To Adopt Button or send us an e-mail at Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-A-Fish. Adopt-A-Fish correspondents Dave Fuller, at Fort Peck, and Matt Jaeger, at Glendive, are fisheries biologists with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. They’ll post weekly updates every Thursday throughout April and May on this site and in the Outdoors section of The Billings Gazette. |
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