Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
FORT PECK – No, this Elvis is not the “King of Rock ‘n Roll,” but Pallid Sturgeon #1 in the Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-a-Fish Program.
This pallid has been adopted by various classrooms to follow during April and May and he has been given the name Elvis, Honker, and Bubbles, depending which school named him.
Over the past couple of weeks, fisheries crews from Montana and North Dakota came together to collect adult pallid sturgeon from the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers to take to hatcheries.
There, hatchery managers will keep close tabs on them and they will be treated like “kings” (or “queens”). These fish will be spawned in late-June and their young will be released back into the river. Under existing habitat conditions, it appears this is the only way that the endangered pallid sturgeon will be kept from going extinct.
We rely on our radioed fish to tell us just where the hot spots are for these prehistoric critters. We assume that where there is one pallid sturgeon, there must be others.
So, on the first day of this great pallid hunt, Cody Dix located Elvis just up the Yellowstone River. He instructed another member of the crew to begin deploying the net.
After a few minutes of drifting, he saw the “bite,” of a fish hitting the net, which can be seen as the buoy rope begins bouncing around erratically as the fish becomes entangled. “Fish-on,” he yelled, “Bring it in!”
Sure enough, up came the giant white rostrum of a pallid. After a brief hesitation of disbelief the crew performed the pallid dive, where individuals perform a not-so-graceful flop onto the deck of the boat to hoist in the big catch.
Into the tank and off to the hatchery truck it went for further observation. It wasn’t Elvis, but it was another fish hanging out with him. This fish had been captured in earlier years and tagged with a passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag.
From this tag we knew it was a male and had not been used in the propagation program yet. We try to use as many different fish as we can to preserve genetic diversity. A good one for the hatchery.
At this point, Cody was winning bragging rights for the first, the most and the biggest fish. He then boated back up to the same area. After only a few more minutes of netting, “Whoa, there’s another,” he exclaimed. Catching a fish in two consecutive drifts of the net is a rare occurrence when pallid fishing.
As they were bringing in the net, the signal on the receiver was getting louder and louder. There he was without the studded leather jacket, dark shades or blue suede shoes – but he was Elvis.
After two long weeks and many drifts of the net, a total of 11 females and 17 males were taken to hatcheries in Montana and North Dakota.
Unfortunately for the Adopt-A-Fish program, we wont being seeing much more movement out of Elvis for the rest of this spring – he’s in a hatchery now. In fact, another one of our past pallid sturgeon Adopt-A-Fish is also in the hatchery this year, as well.
While that’s bad news for the kids following Pallid #1, more importantly, progeny from these fish will be used to augment the dwindling population of these old wild fish. Elvis will be helping to produce more pallids for future classrooms to follow.
They are buying time for the pallid sturgeon. Hopefully, after some habitat improvements and a better understanding of these fish, the goal of a self-sustaining population will be attained.
Among our other fish, there were a couple of big movers this past week. Blue sucker #2 moved 45 miles downstream and paddlefish #3 swam a whopping 145 miles up the Missouri River.
To learn more about Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-A-Fish and follow radio-implanted fish and turtles, just go to www.pikemasters.com and click on the Adopt-A-Fish link. Teachers can sign up their classes for the program, name their two adopted fish and join in on the fun.
Dave Fuller is a fisheries biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks stationed at Fort Peck.