Lack of information is hampering provincial and federal efforts to protect an ancient fish – so anglers are helping to tag and track their young
In the murky waters of the Fraser River, the creature at the top of the food chain is a living dinosaur. Largely unchanged for millions of years, the massive white sturgeon has survived ice ages. A little more than a century of human activity, however, has pushed this fish to the edge of extinction in parts of the Fraser watershed.
Lower Fraser white sturgeon have been assessed as threatened and are currently in the process of being listed in the federal Species at Risk Act . Kevin Estrada is a director with the angling guides association, and he believes the data are unreliable – people only want to catch the big trophy fish, so no one was really counting the small ones. That’s why his group is now researching the juvenile population.
“That’s a beautiful sight,” Mr. Estrada said as he navigated down a quiet side channel of the Fraser, an intertidal zone that supports a rich array of wildlife. He was referring to what can be seen only on sonar: a dense cluster of sturgeon, suspended in an ebb tide. “In this spot, there are probably 1,000 fish within 100 feet. That’s abundance.”
With the fish sitting in a custom cradle attached to the side of his boat, Mr. Estrada scanned it for a tag. It had none, so he slipped a syringe under one plate to inject a tracking transponder. He released the fish back into the river, where it swam vigorously away, quickly disappearing from view.Juveniles get injected with trackers if they don’t already have them, and are measured and weighed.Sturgeon were once plentiful throughout the Fraser watershed.
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