Matt Balazik releases one of the first sturgeons that had been tagged into the James River near Presquile National Wildlife Refuge.

Recent archaeological excavation at Jamestown has uncovered sturgeon remains. Large numbers of scutes, the protective plates that occur along a sturgeon’s back, have been recovered. The sturgeon was an important source of food for the early colonists during the hard times.

Long time Chester resident Bill McDaniel can remember sturgeon being caught and landed at the City Point dock in Hopewell during the early 1930s when he was a young child. This was just about the same time their populations dropped dramatically in the James, according to Atlantic Sturgeon landing records.

The Atlantic Sturgeon or Acipenser oxyrhinchus is the largest freshwater fish in this part of the world and grow up to 14 feet long and can live up to 60 years.  They are bottom feeders.

VCU, Sea Grant, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service are working together to study the Atlantic Sturgeon. This is the most extensive research effort along the Atlantic Coast. The research efforts will include habitat mapping, basic biology and life history, and human-fish interactions.

 Extensive field research on the Atlantic Sturgeon’s life history in the James River is taking place just east of Chester by graduate student Matt Balazik. He is working under the direction of Greg Garman, an ecology professor at VCU associated with VCU’s Rice Center.

Matt’s major research emphasis involves a technique called catch and release. In this technique, the sturgeon are caught and tagged with a variety of tracking devices and released back into the river. The overall goal of the tagging research is to thoroughly document the life history of the sturgeon in the James River.

Once the life history is documented, management initiatives can be taken in order to protect the sturgeon and help to reestablish them as an integral part of the James River ecosystem. One concrete  example of this would be alerting the Corp of Engineers once the location of spawning areas have been established so that they could modify their dredging schedules to keep from disturbing the sturgeon during spawning.

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