Transcript of Interview

Ron Bruch -Wisconsin DNR Interview

“Sturgeon is name of a group of species worldwide. They live north of the equator; there’s basically twenty-five different species in the world. And lake sturgeon is one of seven different species in North America.

The lake sturgeon range in the North America actually is the Mississippi River drainage, the Great Lakes drainage and then the Hudson Bay drainage, those three water systems. And in most of that range, the populations are depressed or in many cases extinct because of over harvest over the years, building of dams on the spawning streams. And as a result their populations are not any where near what they were prior to European settlement.

Except on our system here. Our population on the Lake Winnebago system of Lake sturgeon is the largest anywhere in North America and our population is probably as robust, right now, as it’s ever been.

Sturgeon have had the same form for the last hundred and fifty million years. They have a unique life history; they live for a very long time. The females can live up to one hundred years and the males up to forty to forty-five years. And then they don’t spawn until later in life. The females first spawn when they’re twenty to twenty five years old and then only spawn once every three to five years.

And in the spring when the water temperatures begin to rise, the fish will move into the spawning areas, and begin to lay their eggs. And so each female carries on the average about three hundred and thirty thousand eggs. And so it takes her a long time to get rid of all those eggs. And typically it could be eight to twelve hours that she’s spawning constantly. Then the males get on either side of the females and then they’ll quiver and move forward as they’re doing this and then emitting sperm and the females emitting the eggs and it’s just a cloud of sperm and eggs in the water. And the eggs just roll down onto the bottom, get caught in the rocks and crevices and incubate there to hatch out.