NatureBoost MiniBoost Lake Sturgeon
June 2025
SMA
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>> Hey there! It's Jill with NatureBoost, here with another MiniBoost, and a totally crazy creature feature! What wildlife weirdo are we discussing? It's the armored, ancient and totally awesome lake sturgeon. Unfamiliar? Well, picture this. A fish with a body like a submarine, whiskers like a cat, and a fossil record that goes back more than 135 million years. Lake sturgeon are living dinosaurs. Here's fisheries biologist Travis Moore.
>> Lake sturgeon are a prehistoric fish that live primarily in the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. One of the things that I think is cool with lake sturgeon, is you start looking at that size. They can get to be over 200 pounds, and they feed on a lot of smaller things, like small fish, cray fish, and insects. They don't have any teeth. So, they're not harmful to anybody. They're easy to handle whenever you catch them in the wild.
>> So the name lake sturgeon is actually a bit of a misnomer, since most are found in our big rivers. Get this, they don't even reach adulthood and start reproducing until they're 20 to 30 years old. And, they live to be over 100! These fish have seen more history than my grandparents. But, it's not all ancient glory. These fish were once common in Missouri, but overharvest and degradation of their river habitat nearly brought them to extinction in Missouri by the early 1900s. In the 70s, MDC listed the species as "state endangered" and banned their harvest. Later in 1984, MDC hatcheries with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began raising lake sturgeon from brood stock provided by the state of Wisconsin, and releasing them into the Mississippi river. Then, 30 years later, which is the span of time needed for lake sturgeon to mature and reach breeding age, fishery staff made a momentous discovery.
[2:03.]
In 2015, biologists confirmed lake sturgeon naturally reproduced in the Mississippi River, near St. Louis. Natural spawning was documented a second time along the Mississippi, in West Alton in 2023. Then, just last year on the Osage River . . . what I love is that it was citizen science that alerted biologists that the fish were spawning.
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>> In both of the locations that we've had lake sturgeon confirmed spawning, those first reports came from staff or came from volunteers throughout the state. People who were out fishing, who were seeing these things and they said "hey, this is something pretty cool." So then they'd reach out to MDC staff, and we were able to go out and confirm that there were lake sturgeon on site, collect some eggs, and verify that spawning was happening at those two locations.
The thing we want people to watch for . . . when lake sturgeon go to spawn, there are a couple of different things, as you can see. You may see them cruising the surface, you may see them porpoising. The thing that really stands out, is you'll see these large fish thrashing around the rocks. That's the actual spawning going on. If you see that activity, please call an MDC employee, so we can get some folks out there.
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>> There's even more great news to share on these living fossils. Earlier this spring, lake sturgeon were spawned for the first time at MDC's Blind Pony hatchery, located in Sweet Springs.
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>> Well, this is a historic event for us. We were harvesting eggs and milk from lake sturgeon that we collected from Missouri to raise offspring, to release back into our wild rivers. We have collected eggs from Wisconsin in the past. They've been very good about working with us, and the Fish and Wildlife Service to get them. They weren't going to be able to produce those this year, so we made the effort to start collecting those ourselves.
[4:00.]
There's two different stages on being able to produce lake sturgeon in our hatchery system. We're at Blind Pony hatchery right now. First we end up, we have some males we were able to catch in the wild. We harvest the milk from them. We save that back. As those females become ready, we put them in this machine that we're able to hold them down on, and we start to massage their belly to help force those eggs out. And . . . you know, they can release thousands of eggs at one time. Then we'll go ahead and put that molt in there, and then . . . hold those fish within the hatchery system as they start to develop.
They're being held here at Blind Pony hatchery. As they hatch out, we will transfer them to Lost Valley hatchery. That's where we'll grow them out through the rest of the year, and they will be stocked in our waters in September.
>> The goal of the lake sturgeon recovery program is to eventually have a recreational fishing season. But, it's important to remember, they are still listed as endangered, so if you happen to catch a lake sturgeon, you must release it back into the water. But, thanks to years and years of conservation efforts, these gentle giants are slowly making a comeback.
Learn more about lake sturgeon on our website at missouriconservation.org. That's it for today's creature feature! If you enjoyed this little mini boost episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. Don't forget, you can always send us a message at missouriconservation.org/natureboost. I'm Jill Pritchard with MDC, and I'll catch you next time!
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