Tom Zinnen: Welcome,
I work here at the University everof Wisconsin-Madisonite at the Lab. I'm Tom Zinnen.
Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those organizations and our other partners, the Wisconsin Alumni Association,
the Science Alliance, and Wisconsin Public Television,
thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
We do this every Wednesday
night, 50 times a year. Tonight, I'm delighted to be able to introduce to you
Kathleen Schmitt Kline. She's an outreach coordinator at
supports research education and outreach dedicated to the stewardship and sustainable use of the nation's Great Lakes
and ocean resources.
I had the great pleasure of driving home from the Boundary Waters in Quetico a week and a
half ago along the north shore
of Lake Superior, that's a pretty amazing thing that you get to work with.
She has a BA in biology and English from Luther College in
UW-Madison. Tonight she's going to be Dtalking to us about one of the life science communication from
Wisconsin, the lake sturgeon, and I think some of the cultural great aspects of living in
aspects of it. You can see from the title she's
going to be talking to us about "People Of The Sturgeon." Please join me in welcoming Kathleen to Wednesday Nite at
the Lab.
Kathleen Kline: Can you hear [APPLAUSE]
me okay? That's okay?
Well, thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here at All right.
Wednesday Nite at the Lab. This presentation is based on a
book that I coauthored called "People of the Sturgeon:
It was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Wisconsin's Love Affair with an Ancient Fish."
Press. I coauthored it with Fred
Binkowski, who works at the UW
Milwaukee Water Institute, he's also our Sea Grant Aquaculture Extension Specialist, and with
Ron Bruch who is the lead sturgeon biologist with Wisconsin DNR.
And that's it.
[LAUGHTER] Books just don't happen.
who made this book possible. I always like to thank everybody
Great Lakes Water Institute where Fred works, Sturgeon for work for, of course Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources,
Tomorrow, which you'll learn a little bit more about them
during this presentation. The UW Center for the Study of
Upper Midwestern Cultures helped us with a large oral history
project that was done for this
Winnebago region for this book. The Oshkosh Public Museum which is holding all the artifacts and histories around the Lake
collected. the interviews that we
And of course the Historical Society Press for working with
I also always like to acknowledge Bob Rashid was the us to publish it.
ago, and this was his last photographer for this book. He passed a way about two years
on the Wolf River. project and he was very, very excited about it. This is a photograph of him up
He's got his little aquarium there in the water, and he's
photos of sturgeon spawning. trying to take some underwater
So most of the photos in this presentation that aren't the historical photos with Bob's.
And Bob worked with a lot of
different University of Wisconsin Madison departments, and we miss him very sorely.
Well, I thought I'd start off this presentation with a big
sturgeon caught in Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin's largest fish. That big blob there is a lake
get it right, is a 188-pound lake. That one is, just to make sure I
sturgeon that was speared in 2004 by Dave Piechowski of
And it held the record of the largest sturgeon speared in Lake Red Granite.
Winnebago until last year when a 212-pound sturgeon was speared.
So that now holds the record. By the way, that sturgeon had a 42.8-inch girth.
bit bigger than mine. Sturgeon are very, very big fish, but today my story isn't So its waistline was a little
This is a story about a very just about a big fish story.
The lake sturgeon population in uWisconsin's Lake Winnebago cultures that have developed in Wisconsin around this fish.
system is the largest in the world.
And this didn't happen by chance. It's a result of over 100 years of state management and
research. As well as 35 years of citizen
which I'll talk about a little involvement through a group called Sturgeon for Tomorrow,
bit later. It's a true conservation success
Wisconsin really can be proud of, and it's also something many story, and it's something that
And I should too, there are many people hope to replicate around the Great Lakes region.
cultures, I can't cover all of them in this presentation.
at the Lab I wanted to focus a Since I'm here at Wednesday Nite
culture that's developed around little bit sturgeon.he research Sturgeon researchers are quite There's a whole unique research
you'll see later on. passionate about this fish, as
This is a baby sturgeon. This is a six-month-old lake
Binkowski raised in his lab and Milwaukee. sturgeon that my coauthor Fred
They're very, very special ancient fish.
They've existed for over
150 million years. So they were swimming around
roaming around on Earth. when the dinosaurs were still
And Fred always likes to say that whatever killed off the
lake sturgeon so they're pretty special. dinosaurs didn't kill off the
There are 27 species of sturgeon around the world, and only three
in North America live in fresh
water, and that's the lake sturgeon, the pallid sturgeon,
Lake sturgeon actually predate and the shovelnose sturgeon.
the formation of the Great Lakes.
Mississippi River system before the Great Lakes formed, and when They were swimming around in the
they did they kind of moved in there.
Because they are a very ancient fish, there are some special
characteristics of them. They have a skeleton of
cartilage instead of bones. And they also have, instead of a
spinal system, they have a notochord much like a lamprey or
a hagfish.
And they're a very old fish. And they also don't have scales.
cartilage on them, I don't know if you can see them, you can see They have these rows of bony
them kind of better on the younger fish, called scoots.
So they're kind of like a spiky torpedo.
Yes? >> Can you turn the front lights
down so we can see better?
>> Can you turn? No. [LAUGHTER]
I was wondering if it was as dark for you as it is for me.
They're the largest native fish living in the Great Lakes. So, sorry about that.
They're bottom feeders so they don't have any teeth.
They just kind of cruise around on the bottom of the lake or the
river and they suck up food with this tube-like appendage that's
kind of like a vacuum cleaner that comes out and they just
suck up the food and then it goes back into their body.
They can live to be more than 100 years old.
They can weigh more than 200 pounds, as we've seen, and they
can measure as long as seven
feet long. Some people think that they might get to be actually bigger
in the Great Lakes, but we'll talk more about that later. All right.
pictures of some adult sturgeon. These are just some other
They kind of soften as they age. So that little sturgeon was very
Larger lake sturgeon they kind spiky.
of, their scoots kind of smooth out. They don't really need the
protection once they're adults. There's nothing else bigger than
then they also, if you can see them except for us. So those kind of smooth out, and
up in the top right-hand corner, they have, like catfish, they have barbels that they can use,
little whiskers that they can use to feel around for food on
Well, sturgeon used to thrive all over the Mississippi River the bottom of the lake. Sorry.
system and the Great Lakes and the Hudson Bay, but then they
ran into some problems in the 1800s.
And there were three major problems for them: dams,
pollution, and overfishing. You can see what some of the
problems were with dams. You can see actually, too, the
sturgeon appendage that comes out to feed that's sticking out there.
from migrating up to their But dams prevented sturgeons
spawning spots much like salmon. So that would physically prevent
needed to go. And then standing on a dam was a them from getting to where they
pretty easy place to spear a sturgeon.
So that's what happened very
frequently. This photo was taken probably in the 1890s by HH Bennett who is a
very well known photographer
from the Wisconsin Dells area. And this is on the Wisconsin
And this is, I really like this picture because I really like the word log jam, but this is what a log jam actually looks
like. It's really a log jam.
in 1886. This is a famous one that happened on the St. Croix River
It was five miles long, and it took several weeks to break up. Logging was Wisconsin's first
major industry, and it depended heavily on Wisconsin River for
that cheap transportation of the lumber.
But with so many rivers clogged up with logs and then, of course, the saw dust coming from
had another affect on sturgeon the mills and everything, that
eggs, the saw dust and logs would prevent those eggs from Even ifactually hatching.o make it up to a river to lay their
overfishing. And then the final thing,
All sturgeon can produce caviar. Caviar is basically sturgeon
in it. eggs with a little bit of salt
When caviar got to be very popular in Europe in the late 1800s, a lot of the rivers there
started to get fished out from
sturgeon. So people started looking to the US for new supply of sturgeon.
First they went out to the east coast, and they basically almost
And then they heard about large populations of lake sturgeon in fithe Great Lakes region.ic And there was a very large
caviar industry in the Great
were gone. Lakes region for probably about 10 to 15 years, and then what happened, well, all the sturgeon
So the largest, there was probably a caviar plant in Green Bay, but the largest one was in
Ohio in Sandusky. So these things were happening
all over the Great Lakes region, the pollution, the dams, and the
overfishing.
Lakes watershed but it's also Bkind of out on its own, ande because of a few unique things technically part of the Great
we have such a healthy lake sturgeon population in it. about Lake Winnebago, that's why
And one of the things is the Wolf River, which is the main
river feeding into Lake Winnebago, was really terrific
people just wanted to run logs for running logs. And it was so terrific that
all the way down to Oshkosh, and they didn't want to build mills along the river.
So the Wolf River actually
stayed pretty free flowing, which was terrific for sturgeon. They could make it up there and
spawn.
And the other thing is that the lower Fox River, which goes from Lake Winnebago to Green Bay and
actually looks like it's running
north and it actually does empty into Green Bay, that's always something we need to point out,
that drops about 170 feet from
Lake Winnebago to Green Bay. So that's about the size of Niagara Falls.
And that kind of made Lake
Winnebago still connected to Lake Michigan but kind of on its
So all of the heavy commercial own, too.
fishing that happened in the Great Lakes didn't really affect
And I should say there is some the Lake Winnebago population.
intermixing between those two populations. They continuously find Winnebago
sturgeon down in Green Bay. And there are some sturgeon that
pretty terrific feat. And this is just a historical have made imap. into Lake Winnebago as well, which is a
This was when, and it shows the elevation drop there from Lake I think from, yeah, 1867.
Winnebago and then down to Green Bay, and this was when the
federal government was thinking about creating a system of
Lakes to the Mississippi River, and it was kind of not very locks, successful.did, to uBut anyway, it produced aat
beautiful map.
So in the late 1800s all sorts of wildlife began to dwindle, and I think the frontier was
kind of closing up and people were kind of taking as much resources as they could, and
fish populations in the state. this really had an affect on the
And again, this is hard to read, but this is actually a train
probably into the 1900s as well, that was used in the 1800s,
to transport fish fry all over the state.
And in 1874 Wisconsin developed a fisheries commission. It was kind of its first step toward developing a conservation
department. They developed this fishery commission, and the main thing
fish and then cruising around the state and depositing them in that they were doing was raising
all of these lakes and rivers. And they figured if the fish
were starting to run out, they
And actually the Badger traveled were going to just raise more and keep planting them in the waterways.
to Chicago's World Fair in 1893 carrying some Wisconsin sturgeon for the exhibit.
But as the commission started serving the waters in Wisconsin more they started to figure out we don't think that artificial
propagation is going to be the
some laws that would protect answer. So they started to try and work with the legislature to enact
some of the fish. One of the most basic things would be to say that, no, you
can't spear sturgeon during spawning season.
That's just not good for the population.
So they tried to, I think the first thing they tried to do was
the books and present them to the legislature and say, hey, scan you just sign off on this. together that already existed on
local politics and problems that And that stirred up so many
it never passed. So the fish laws in Wisconsin were very, very, they were just
very troublesome. So the fish commission really had a hard time trying to get anything through the
legislature.
But slowly they started to
develop some laws, and one of the first things to go was being able to spear sturgeon or many
other fish during the spawning
areas of Wisconsin. Around Prairie du Chien, But they encountered a lot of resistance, mostly in a few
Wisconsin, around Green Bay, and then around Lake Winnebago.
And these were all areas that had been settled early on by
living in those areas just, they Europeans, and I personally think that a lot of people
them and they were a big part of had been living there so long that they really started to see these resources as belonging to
their life. So they encountered a lot of resistance, and as I went
through all of the laws and did my research for the book, the Lake Winnebago region was a very
to contact their legislators and active political region and knew
made a big ruckus. So they were able to thwart some
get the laws to reflect more of what they wanted to happen in their region. laws So I found that reallyh or
interesting that they really
wanted to fight for their resources. Oh, by the way, I should mention
about this photo, these are two commercial fishermen with a fine
catch of sturgeon in 1913 on Lake Winnebago.
I think the one on the right, okay, 187.5 pounds, that
So some people were fighting to kind of hold on to the old ways of using as many resources as sturgethey wanted to. there.
There were other people in
Wisconsin who were starting to kind of step back and say, hey, we need to look at this, we need
to look at this from more of a
conservation view. This is a photo of the cutover
So offer all of the timber in northern Wisconsin was cut down there was just barren land with restumps all over the place..
Then they encouraged farmers to come up and farm this land. So after things like this had happened in Wisconsin, and
actually the year after the last
passenger pigeon was ever seen in the country people in
to start enacting some better legislation to protect our Wisconsin started saying we need
resources. So in 1913, sorry, in 1915 there
was a major overhaul of the fisheries commission in Wisconsin, and basically they decided that they needed a
conservation department, they needed to look at more than just
they also decided to ban all fish. And in 1915 this happened and
I'm going to shift into the research aspect of this a little harvest of lake sturgeon in the state.
Trout Lake Research Station in bit more. This is a photograph of the
It has a very, very long history northern Wisconsin, part of the UW Limnology Department here on campus.
founded the study of limnology. And that's Edward Birge, if you can see, sitting second from the founded this department, also
And what started to happen after right with the hat on.
1915 was that rather than trying to pass different legislation based on who had the most
political power in a certain
the state started to look toward region and who wanted to have strict fish laws and who wanted to have more lenient fish laws,
manage these resources based on tscience rather than on the assistance to try and start making some decisions on how to
involved with the fisheries commission. He was on the commission for a So Edward Birge was very
He was also very involved at the while.
university. He was one of the university presidents for some time.
And the man sitting to his left is Edward Schneberger and one of
his graduate students. And Edward Schneberger ended up
being the first person to do a
of this population in 1941. resSo this population in Lakego population of sturgeon. So he kind of founded the study
Winnebago has been studied continuously since then.
But even though, and I wish you could see this one a little bit better, it's my favorite photo, but even though there were some
positive things happening with
the university and with some research studies starting, there
going on with the sturgeon was still a lot of poaching
population. So it was still illegal to touch the sturgeon population, but
many people, especially up on the Wolf River, were still
harvesting the fish. And it was also during
prohibition time, so sometimes
here. iBut there was quite a bit of with a little moon shine, which these guys are celebrating right
poaching activity going on up-river.
These are some photographs of some early wardens in the 1940s.
They're taking sturgeon off of set lines.
And that was one of the most
popular ways for people to illegally harvest sturgeon on the Wolf River.
They would simply just stretch a
And basically it depended on the line across the river, and then tie a bunch of lines to it with a bunch of hooks.
sturgeon running up-river during spawning season.
hooks. They would just run into the
And many, many, many sturgeon were taken this way. They're holding two sturgeon
there, two wardens, that they took off of these set lines,
and, again, it's hard to see but there are just hundreds of lines
hanging down with all of these
hooks. So it was a big problem, and
that time either so they really had their work cut out for them. there weren't as many wardens at
And I should just say, throughout this book, because we
did do these oral histories, we do have a lot of stories from people in the region talking
the cultures around sturgeon. And this is Ken Corbett on the about these different aspects of
warden, that's why he's in front left. He was an early warden, a flying
of the plane, and Haze Diemel, who lived up on the, still lives
And his family did a bit of poaching. So there's a story in the book up on the Wolf River.
warden plane looking down on the about Ken Corbett flying in his
there and they played all these tricks on him and hid boats on activity, and Haze Diemel and his buddies knew that he was up
him and made decoys. But they're standing next to
each other now so the time has
passed. Well, right around the time of the Great Depression is when
people around the Lake Winnebago
region really wanted to regain access to this resource.
lot of people were having a hard During the Great Depression a
time, and a lot of people around the Lake Winnebago really missed
You can imagine harvesting a eating this fish.
200-pound fish how long that might feed your family for. Plus, it was just a big part of
their culture.
They had learned this from their grandparents who ultimately had learned it from the Native
Americans living in that region when Europeans first moved in.
So in the 1930s, again there was a lot of legislative pressure.
People around the Lake Winnebago
region were heading to Madison to do a lot of lobbying, and
pass a winter spearing, only for ultimately they were able to
Lake Winnebago. So this is the only place in Wisconsin where this sport is
allowed.
So that was in 1931 and there's been the sturgeon spearing season on Lake Winnebago ever
since.
And that's a photo from 1935, David and Rose --. And I should say their daughter
submitted this photo, their twins, and they wrote this
really nice letter saying that their parents were both deaf and
this was the first time that her
father had gone sturgeon spearing and he got a sturgeon
excited and their daughters wrote "Can you imagine all the on the first time and he was so
hands flying around telling this great story."
I just thought that was so
is all about, it does go back to cute. Well, just for a little background on what the spearing
Lakes region and in other parts thof the country as well.ng But basically it hasn't changed lia whole lot since Nativet
Americans were the only ones
doing it. You need to have a very dark area.
You cut a hole in the ice and you need to be able to see down into the water so you want the
coming out of the water. only light that's coming to be
So you need to put a blanket over your head. That's what Native Americans
usually did.
And they also usually just laid down on the ice on their stomachs, took a spear, dangled
the little decoy in the ice to
into modern day. get the sturgeon's attention, and then just waited. Well, this is how it's developed
I think a lot of people around Lake Winnebago eventually decided that they didn't want to
be lying down on the ice with a blanket over their head so they started creating the ice shanty.
the modern spearing age was the creation of the ice shanty. This is actually almost I think a 30-year-old ice shanty that I
think was still out on the ice
last year. It's a pretty common one to see out there.
But they're all different shapes
and sizes. And basically the most important
don't have any windows. They're also called dark houses. thing about them is that they
She's ecstatic. She was very, very excited. A lot of people ask me, why do first sturgeon that she speared.
That just seems, why can't they just take them on hook and line? they have to spear the fish?
that's been passed on through generations, families living And I just always say that it goes back to the tradition
taken since it was only the Native Americans taking them. And honestly I've sat in an ice shanty with people before, and
I've sat there six hours looking
Lake Winnebago when it's frozen. down at this whole. And this is just a scene of driving out on to the lake on
This is what it looks like inside the shanty.
for this eerie grow that comes It's basically pitch dark except
from the hole. And all you're doing is just
this hole. sitting there and looking into
of life. And sometimes you don't see anything. Sometimes you don't see any sort
So I actually think it's kind of And there are some people who sit there for 15 years and they never get a sturgeon.
maybe the most sporting way to take a sturgeon because you have
there. to be pretty darn patient to sit
You take your eyes away from that hole for one second, the fish could go by and then you
might not see one for another decade. Plus, after you spear it you
out of the hole and then wrestle have to get the 200-pound fish
it out of the shanty and then get it on to your truck. So you really have to work for
it. This is just a picture of a spear.
You can't go to Cabela's They're all made locally.
somewhere and buy a sturgeon spear.
Lake Winnebago. They run around $200. And just to kind of segue back They're mostly handmade around
fellow who had that Green Bay Packer shanty out on the ice. This is Bill Casper. into the research, this is the
still poaching going on. So in the 1970s, so there was
studies on the population. The sturgeon population was doing okay. The DNR had continued to do
In the 1970s, because there was a lot of agricultural activity going on around Lake Winnebago,
a lot of that run-off was starting to cloud up the lake.
its deepest part. Well, all the sturgeon spearers were out there and they couldn't It's only about 20 feet deep in
water was very cloudy. see any sturgeon because the
But Bill Casper was convinced that the sturgeon spearing had gotten so bad that something had
to be done and that the DNR wasn't telling the whole story. That they were probably more
than they were letting on. worried about the population
This is the original pamphlet that he came up with in 1977, and he posted it all around the lake asking people, sturgeon
spearers, to get together and discuss what was going on with
the sturgeon population. I have to say, too, that Bill
did tell me that he went around the lake and the best place to
tavern and you see all of these people you know, and then you phave sit down and have a drink And, of course, you get to the
around the lake he was really tired. and then by the time he got
[LAUGHTER] Bill Casper's idea and other
sturgeon spearers who got together with him to form this group called Sturgeon for Tomorrow.
Their idea was that somebody had
to figure out how to artificially raise sturgeon.
People had been trying. Michigan tried in the early 1900s. Nobody knew how to do it.
in 1890. Somebody in Pennsylvania tried
They had all failed. They weren't able to hatch the
eggs, the small little sturgeon just died right away. They couldn't figure out what eggs they wanted to eat.h the
So Bill Casper and the Sturgeon for Tomorrow founders approached
sturgeon artificially. the DNR and said we really need to figure out how to raise
And he actually wanted to start stocking them in Lake Winnebago. Well, the DNR was very leery
about that. They didn't want to start stocking a population that they thought was actually doing just
fine. They tried to let people know that probably the reason why
sturgeon was because they couldn't see them because of the they weren't spearing as many
water clarity in Lake Winnebago. But the more that they talked
back and forth with Sturgeon for
Tomorrow they decided that maybe it would be a good idea to
fish in a hatchery. A, if anything ever did happen figure out how to raise these
to the population, they would be able to kind of start from
scratch and repopulate the lake.
B, they could really learn a lot about the fish during this
about sturgeon in the 1970s at process, and not much was known
this point. They were still a very curious fish that people didn't really
understand their life history,
times of the year. how they developed or what they liked to eat at different times or where they moved at different
So Bill Casper actually, this was citizen science, I think, at its best.
The DNR didn't really know where
to go for help with this because all the other experiments had failed.
So Bill Casper was reading
had gone to the Soviet Union to Natdo studies on sturgeon.old tAnd so Bill Casper was on thea phone to Dartmouth, and he was
calling Bill Ballard. And Ballard was probably almost in his 80s at that point. He had retired and he was doing
the research that he wanted to
do and having a great old time. And Bill Ballard, when he got on the phone with Casper said, my
God, man, you have sturgeon in
Wisconsin? You mean I've been going to the Soviet Union and I could have
just been going to Wisconsin? Which I just thought was so funny because we've come a long way with our communication
technologies. So Bill Ballard was more than happy to come to Wisconsin and
and the DNR. talk to these sturgeon spearers
So Sturgeon for Tomorrow did a little fundraiser and they
here with his wife. They stayed at the Holiday Inn raised the funds to fly him out
And that night Bill Ballard went in Oshkosh, and they had this big talk with the DNR.
artificial propagation try on home to hlake sturgeon. Holiday Inn and wrote down the research protocol to do the first
He handed it over to Bill Casper and then he flew back
to New Hampshire. So these two guys were the lucky
guys that got to go out on the Wolf River in the middle of the
night and try and capture two very large lake sturgeon who
were in the middle of spawning to get their eggs and their
milt. This is Dan Folz and Mike Primising.
with the annual sturgeon They actually still help out
tagging. They're very addicted to this fish, and they're very wonderful
people. So they headed out in the middle
of the night to get these fish and they struggled.
They found a female right away
but then all the males took off, which is what they do.
alive for several hours, So they had to keep the female
actually, while they tried to find a male. And they just kept pouring water
over her and just tried to keep her irrigated.
And finally they did sort things out, got the male, and Dan went
to go take the sturgeon, the
female sturgeon back into the water and she was exhausted, but he said he kind of moved her
back and forth in the water for about 20 minutes and then suddenly she just gave this little flap and then she just
swam away.
And when I was talking to Dan he said something like I've worked with so many fish in my career
at the DNR but really the lake
sturgeon is the only fish you can really have a relationship with.
So this is a picture of lake
sturgeon spawning in the Wolf River. The first try with the
artificial propagation was
different location, this time at unsuccessful. They're very disappointed but the second try they tried a
the Wild Rose fish hatchery, one of the state fish hatcheries. And Ballard came back for that
try, and he slept in the lab on a cot and waited for those
And they survived. sturgeon eggs to hatch and they did.
And at the same time, my coauthor, Fred Binkowski, he had
give it a shot in Milwaukee and he was successful as well. been sent some eggs as well to
So the first successful sturgeon propagation of lake sturgeon
happened here in Wisconsin. I'm probably running a little,
All right. are we going till quarter to? Just keep going?
Well, I thought I'd just tell some more of the stories related to research.
This is three generations of the
Gaiser family. I should just double check. Sorry...
Dave, Bill, and Mike. Bill there in the middle had a
terrific story of eating sturgeon head soup.
That was his favorite way to eat
sturgeon. And that's what his family would do whenever they got a sturgeon.
They would make this special
and his son and his grandson sturgeon head soup. And it was funny because we had this story that he told about it
were just like oh, my God, I would never touch that. But he just really thought of it
like that was the best thing
first studies on the sturgeon population, the first thing, the And Ed Schneberger, the first sturgeon biologist who did the
spearing season ended up to be a great way to gather data on
sturgeon because all the DNR had
their fish and the DNR could to do was say you have to register your fish. So people would come in with
wanted to get a hold of this weigh the fish and they could try and tell what sex it was, how old it was, and they really
bone in the ear called the otolith to try and age the
I've got a picture of that a sturgeon.
little bit later on. But Schneberger found he had a
when he was doing this getting really hard time in the 1940s
people to give up their sturgeon heads because a lot of them liked to make this soup.
So he kind of had to find alternate ways to do that study.
about this special sturgeon head But it nice to find an actual interview of somebody talking
members of the Menominee tribe soup. Which was interesting, too, because talking to some of the
in Wisconsin, there were stories about a sturgeon head soup
So that's probably where the coming from them, too.
recipe came from and has been passed down. Well, these were some of the
early studies being done out on the ice.
were just gathering very basic I think this is from the 1950s. And a lot of the early studies
information about the fish. How long are they and even trying to figure out what part
of their reproductive cycle they
were in. And today when people are registering their sturgeon there
is a lot of science done on these fish when they bring them in. So they're all waiting there
with their frozen sturgeon to check in with the DNR.
a speared sturgeon to try and determine at what reproductive This is a photograph of some of the DNR employees slitting open
stage that they're at. And all of that information is
used to determine, it's a very, very tightly regulated sport. So every year the DNR takes a look at the population data that
they have, and they set up these
at what different types of their quotas for different types of fish. So a male fish, a female fish,
life stage they're at as well. And once one of those quotas is met the whole season shuts down.
The DNR also does quite a bit of
research during the spring spawning season, too. This is right below the Shawano
Dam in Shawano. That's why it looks so dramatic.
But they net as many sturgeon as they possibly can during the
spring spawning season and they release them all. But they bring them out of the
they also scan them to see if they have any identification, if water, they measure them, and
60 or so years. Early on when the DNR started identifying the fish, they would some point over the last
of hard to see, but basically a metal clip on the pectoral fin. And it's funny, sometimes when just put these metal, it's kind
or when somebody brings in a they're bringing in these fish
speared fish there are still fish out there with those tags. Some of them have fallen off and
they switched to a different
method, but it's kind of neat to see.
long time. Those fish have been around a
So this is the modern way that they do it now. They use something called a PIT
tag.
It's basically the same thing that people put in to, veterinarians put into your pet,
your dog or your cat, in case they get lost and they can be scanned.
the live sturgeon. So they insert a PIT tag into
And then they release them later on. Basically then whenever a
sturgeon is caught again in the spring by the DNR or brought in if it's been speared, they will scan that fish to see if they've
seen it somewhere else. So now the DNR has a huge database about this sturgeon
There's nothing else like it in the world. population.
about the population here in So a lot of science, a lot of things that have been found out
Wisconsin are now being transferred throughout the world really.
So this is during the spring
spawning season. Again, hard to see, but Fish and
Georgia to collect eggs and milt Wildlife Service came from
population died out. from Winnebago sturgeon to take back to the Tennessee River where their lake sturgeon
So they're collecting the eggs here and then they would drive
back to the lab. back that night to take the eggs
That's Fred Binkowski, my coauthor, on the left. He'll drive up to the Wolf
River, too, during spawning season and take some eggs.
So he's right there, I think mixing up, what, two, four, six,
seven different batches of
raises them for different studies that they do in the And heWinnebago system.to his That's Fred and Ron, my twod
coauthors.
They're inserting PIT tags into these very young sturgeon. And then they'll release them
into the system and track them
to see where do they go when they're six months old, where do
old, where are they going during they go when they're two years
different times of the season. Fred's also been doing some research on tracking adult
sturgeon. So he does perform surgery on them and inserts radio
go. And then he takes to the air and transponders and then lets them
World War II biplane. [LAUGHTER] he tracks them. But he doesn't always do it in a
the book and he made it happen. So there he is. BuWhat he does in a normal DNRd he really wanted this photo in
and listen for these fish with plane is he'll take headphones
the radio transponders and then has a GPS unit so he can track where they are.
So he does this year-round. He'll be up there, yes, all sorts of times of the year. And this is just another photo
of Fred.
He has a very personal relationship with this fish.
two. I think I'll skip over these
And I'm just going to go to a lot of the things that have been found out here in Wisconsin
about lake sturgeon is now
spreading throughout the Great Lakes region. There's a lot of Great Lakes
restoration going on for lake sturgeon which is really
actually caught in the Detroit exciting. So this is a sturgeon that was
River, of all places. They weren't expecting to find any sturgeon there.
The Detroit River has had some
So they've been using things problems. But they did have they actually found them spawning.
learned on the Wolf River about what sort of spawning habitats sturgeon like to recreate areas
in the Detroit River so that
those sturgeon can find more places to spawn.
transferred throughout the Great And another thing that's being
Lakes region is the idea of Sturgeon for Tomorrow. People, usually spearers, who
get together and do a lot of
fundraising for sturgeon and support a lot of sturgeon research so that the fish will
be there for their grandchildren
to be able to enjoy as well. So Sturgeon for Tomorrow
the Lake Winnebago region, about chapter, there are five around
3,000 members. And they've raised quite a bit
Another chapter just opened up of money for sturgeon research.
in Michigan now. So that idea is spreading as
And I'll just finish with, well.
that's actually my grandfather on the left there holding up a
Mississippi River. lake sturgeon from the
He was a commercial fisherman on the Mississippi River so that's my sturgeon connection.
So thanks a lot.
I appreciate the opportunity. [APPLAUSE]