Original story published in The Sarnia Observer 2021-05-19
Lake sturgeon – Canada’s largest freshwater fish – were once so plentiful in the Great Lakes that people considered them pests.
In the 19th century, with the lakes teeming with the mighty fish, carcasses of lake sturgeon that were caught incidentally by fishermen were piled up on the shore, fed to pigs, burned for fuel or thrown back into the water. Once the commercial value of lake sturgeon caviar was realized, commercial fishing nearly wiped them out. By the early 1900s, many populations of sturgeon were eliminated from the Great Lakes and today less than one per cent of the original population still exists, thanks to a mix of massive habitat loss, poaching, pollution, overfishing and invasive species.
While most of the Great Lakes region has seen a precipitous decline in the number of lake sturgeon, now considered an endangered species in Canada, the corridor between Lake Huron and Lake Erie – the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River – is one of the few places the population has not been completely devastated.
Indeed, the sturgeon population in this region is experiencing a bit of a recovery, thanks to efforts on both sides of the border.
More than 10,000 of the toothless, crustacean, bug and worm-eating bottom-feeders – which, in some cases, can live from 120 to 150 years and have remained unchanged as a species for millions of years – now call the corridor home. The St. Clair River is home to the largest spawning population of lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes. And one of the most prolific spawning beds of the massive fish – they can weigh up to 180 kilograms and grow up to two metres long – exists beneath the Bluewater Bridge that links Sarnia to Port Huron.
So successful have efforts been to protect the ancient species the Friends of the St. Clair River, an environmental non-profit based out Port Huron, Mich., hosts an annual celebration of the mighty sturgeon at the Fort Gratiot Light Station each June. It’s the Friends of the St. Clair River Sturgeon Festival, which draws thousands of people from the U.S. and Canada.
Friends of the St. Clair River’s Kirsten Lyons and Amy Meeker-Taylor spoke about the Great Lakes’ “gentle giants” at this week’s iteration of Green Drinks Sarnia, a monthly gathering of people to discuss environmental issues.
Efforts to protect the sturgeon in the U.S. have been ongoing on for years, Lyons said, with 19 of the 20 states within the sturgeon’s range having declared the species as either threatened or endangered.
With agencies monitoring the lake sturgeon population, its health and its movement through the use of tags and acoustic telemetry – collecting information through the use of small receivers implanted in certain fish – along with three new spawning reefs built in the St. Clair River over the past several years, the lake sturgeon has enjoyed a comeback of sorts in recent years, she added.
Not only that, the St. Clair has never been dammed, unlike other rives in the Great Lakes region, meaning that sturgeon, which need clear, fast-running water with a rocky bottom to spawn, have largely had their habitat preserved in this region.
Through the annual sturgeon festival, as well as through school educational programs such as Adopt-a-Sturgeon, the Friends of the St. Clair River have raised awareness about the importance of the endangered fish and its fight for survival, Meeker-Taylor said.
She said she hopes more people on the Canadian side of the border take the opportunity to come to the June 1 festival to see the fascinating fish and find out ways they can help its recovery in the Great Lakes.
“We want to talk to people about the sturgeon story and why we celebrate the sturgeon,” she said. “A lot of time in a fifth-grade class, kids might adopt a whale or they might buy a section of the rainforest, but our focus is on place-based education and learning about and caring about what’s in your own backyard, then having that translate to caring about things on a global scale.”
The festival, which is free and features a host of family-friendly activities, including a chance to touch live sturgeons and other native fish, started in 2014 after a trio of likeminded conservationists brainstormed about something that would help shine a light on the big fish’s plight.
“The first year we had about 1,000 people and, last year, we had about six to seven thousand people, so you could say it’s grown quite a bit,” she said.
At the end of the day, Meeker-Taylor added, the most important thing about the festival and the educational programs is to get people thinking about ways they can help the sturgeon recover.
The Friends of the St. Clair River Sturgeon Festival takes place on Saturday, June 1 at Port Huron’s Fort Gratiot Light Station (2800 Omar St.) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.