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Of the multitude of species that inhabit the James River
none so richly link us to our past as Virginians
as the Atlantic Sturgeon.
I grew up right around the corner
and this wasn't going on when I grew up.
There he is! There he is.
He's a big one.
This prehistoric giant has barely changed its appearance since the Triassic period,
Oh, and he jumped right there!
sometimes growing up to 14 feet length in, weighing up to
800 pounds and living well into their 60's.
Pulling it in, we'll
we'll go to the other side and we'll pull with the tide.
Despite their rugged exteriror, which is made up of rows of
armored plates called scutes, they are gentle bottom feeders,
surviving off worms, shellfish, and crustaceans.
While they spend their adult life swimming and living
in the Atlantic Ocean, every spring and fall,
sturgeon return to spawn in the waters where they were born -
they return home to the mighty James River.
We did, I did get a question about where these sturgeon live
and if they live in the James River their whole lives.
No, they do not. It's very rare to see them in the James
not only because they are endangered
but because these fish are anadromous. Everyone say
anadromous. "Anadromous."
What does that mean? Great question, Brandon.
An andromous fish is a fish that is born
in fresh water, so it's born right here in the James River
and then when it gets a certain, it makes its way to the ocean
and lives its life in the ocean. Until it's ready to have
kids, it comes back in into freshwater.
So these fish aren't always in the James River.
"There it is! There it is!" Ohhh, ahhh.
Sweet! It was like...
Hey, there it is again. Ohhh, ahhh!
Arriving in the new world proved challenging,
threatening, and different for early settlers. But the
Atlantic sturgeon was a welcome sight for colonists who were
familiar with a similar with a sturgeon plentiful at that time
in the River Thames back home in England. In the early 1600's
the Jamestown colonists described a rite of passage
in which young Powatan Inidian men would ride on the backs of
the massive sturgeon in the James River. Regardless of its truthfulness,
what remains is a significant respect for this amazing fish,
for much more for just the protein it provided.
I feel, Jack, if we ever
had a national fish, it should
be Atlantic sturgeon. Yes, certainly.
If it were not for Atlantic sturgeon, we probably
would not be having this conversation in English.
We'd be having it in French or Spanish. Because all those original
colonist in Jamestown, ahh, it's a good chance they would have all died of
starvation. But, sturgeon sustained them through at least
a portion of that period down there.
Down through the starving days of that winter.
Ready? Ready. Let's go.
Atlantic sturgeon was so popular as a source of
meat and caviar that by 1890, the population was nearly
destroyed by commercial fishermen who caught up to
800 thousand pounds of sturgeon a year in Virginia.
Overfishing soon took its toll.
Coupled with erosion from agriculture and runoff from
new land develpment, the sturgeon found its once clean
and healthy home now filled with sediment, making it
no longer a safe place to swim and multiply.
They're very, very important fish, not because they are cool,
because they are that canary in the coal mine. If we see sturgeon
start to die from dissoved oxygen, we've got a real problem.
In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the principle
law regulating water pollution and setting goals
for all US waters to be swimmable and fishable.
Two years later, the Virgina Marine Resoucres Commission banned
sturgeon fishing in Virginia waters in the hopes that the once
plentiful fish would repopulate after years of damage.
I was standing right there on that bridge, right there in middle
looking down and they were right below me
and I saw three of them coming this way. And, they were breachg
about every minute or so. How big were they?
Oh, the one I saw had to be at least 8 foot long. Really?!
Seemed like at least 7 or 8 foot long.
In 1970, a reward program established by the
US Fish and Wildlife Service, Virginia Marine Resources Commission and the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation asked commercial watermen to aid in the catch,
tag, and release of Atlantic sturgeon. Fear that the sturgeon
had all but vanished was happily discredited when more
than 300 of the fish are caught as a result of the program.
And then, in 2004, a yearling was captured in the James,
offering definitive proof that sturgeon were spawing in
the river. Small guy.
That's one of the smallest ones we've ever caught.
The U.S. geological survery concluded that there is a
sturgeon poplulation distinct only to the James River.
Ok, so fork, 134;
tote, 155;
pecks, 57.
You know how you chip your dog, we do the same thing with sturgeon.
Two zero two, two zero three.
To give this amazing fish a fighting chance and in an effort to
restore the strugeon to its once impressive range and historic stature,
a team of organizations and agencies banned together in 2006.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Institue of Marine Science, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration, the
US Army Corp of Engineers, VCU Rice Rivers Center and the
James River Association began working together toward
innovative solutions to revive the species.
The fact that they're survivers. You think
about the animals they used to have to avoid, the mass extinctions
they lived through. A lot worse than Great Whites
nowadays. Stuff that would probably eat Great Whites.
Right there, right there.
That's probably last year. It's still soft. They're tough guys.
They're tough fish. So if you just give 'em the opportunity,
if you stop killing them before they spawn, they'll
come back and we're seeing that.
In 2010, 2500 tons of boulders were carefully placed on the
James River bottom near Hopewell to form the nookes
and crannies conducive to sturgeon spawning conditions.
I believe that spawning habitat is limited. Doesn't take much
doesn't take a foot of sediment on top of hard bottom to
kill eggs. It only takes a very, very small amount.
Over the next three years,
two more experimental spawning reefs were designed and built
in the lower James below the fall line.
This is an egg mat so it's something we are putting on the
bottom of the reef, a section of the reef covered, so that if
a fish were to be down there laying eggs, hopefully a
sturgeon, we'd be able to pull and see that there were
actually eggs down there.
There's no parental care.
All they do is just them their best chance by finding the
right habitat. So they just release hundreds of thousands
to millions at a time and hope for the best.
In 2013, coinciding with the building of the third sturgeon
reef, JRA released its biannual report, the State of the James,
which gave the overall health o the river a grade of C,
up 2% from two years prior.
The report's findings concluded that the score was hampered
by several factors where the health of the James continues to
struggle...most notably sediment pollution...
one of the largest impediments to the sturgeon's comeback.
Sedimentation is not one of those warm and fuzzy issues
that people want to wrap their arms around but the
James River Associaiton is taking that on. It's going to
take that kind of effort for us ensure that the habitat's here
for those fish to continue to spawn in the river.
The Environmental Protection Agencey lists sediment from
contaminated runoff as the most common pollutant in rivers,
streams, lakes and resevoirs. However, it is also the
pollutant that we can all help to prevent and reduce in our own
communities across the watershed.
Some things you can do in your own homes, neighborhoods, and
schools to prevent and reduce polluted runoff from entering
the river are: Install a rain barrell.
You can pick up after your pets, you can scoop the poop.
You can plant native plants and trees to help retain sediment.
You can reduce the use of pesticides and limit the use of
fertilizers, espcially making sure to check the weather
before you put fertilizers on your lawn.
You can help by keeping storm drains clear in your
neighborhood of oil, litter and leaves making sure that none
of these things rush down to our James River.
"There we go."
What I learned is, we saw a couple of animals, how
beautiful it was, and if we keep the environment safe
and clean, I think we could,
we could have a beautiful place to live in.
But is only by innovatively addressing sediment pollution
and advocating for stronger measures to protect
water quality in the James River that we can ensure that
this historic fish has a great return.
That's what you want.