Studying sturgeon: Biologists have giant questions about monster fish in upper Snake River

Studying sturgeon: Biologists have giant questions about monster fish in upper Snake River

By JERRY PAINTER

Source: idahostatejournal

10/22/2021

Even though sturgeon have been around unchanged for more than 200 million years, knowledge of the relative new comer now patrolling the upper Snake River of eastern Idaho is a big question mark.

Idaho Fish and Game has been dropping hundreds of white sturgeon into the Snake River between Idaho Falls and the American Falls Dam for the past 30 years but has never paused to take a look at what’s going on with the fish that is not native to the river above Shoshone Falls.

This summer fisheries biologists decided to take an initial peek to see if it was worth a deeper dive to study the population and learn where it was going. First looks proved to be an eye opener
“We did find out that it is a more robust fishery than we thought,” said Joe Thiessen regional fisheries biologist and lead on the study. “There’s a lot of fish there. We did find out that growth rates we’re higher than what we’ve seen in our more wild, historic sturgeon populations, say in like Hell’s Canyon, and in and below Bliss Dam. That’s encouraging to see that they’re growing fast.”