Wildlife

Sex, water and rock and roll: Sturgeon spawn while singing on the rocks

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How does a scientist use sound to save a 150-million-year-old fish? In Wisconsin, Ron Bruch and Chris Bocast are trying to help restore sturgeon stock by listening for the sound they make when spawning that some call “thunder.” The sound can be heard here. “It’s a real low frequency, you can almost feel it instead of hear it,” said Bruch, fish supervisor with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “One of the important measures of success is knowing your stock is spawning.”

Bocast, a University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral student in acoustic ecology, discovered the sound while working on an audio book about sturgeons.

Wildlife

We don’t hate sturgeon

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Echo reader Stephanie Ariganello pointed out a typo in Thursday’s Great Links section: “Volunteers sought to protest sturgeon in Michigan – Detroit Free Press”

She writes: “Those pesky sturgeon.  We ought to be having rallies against them alright, with their snotty prehistoric scutes and their smarmy shark-like fins. Whether it was a simple mis-typing or subconscious comment on someone’s part, not sure. But I believe it should be ‘protect.’”

It was a simple typo, I swear. We like to be transparent about our biases around Echo. And I feel fairly confident that no one on the staff has it in for sturgeon.

Water

Spawning sturgeon typifies good karma

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(OH) The Toledo Blade – Spawning by lake sturgeon in Canadian waters of the Detroit River has been confirmed for the first time in 30 years, boosting hopes for continued recovery of this rare, ancient species in the river and adjoining waters of western Lake Erie. The spawning is occurring on a reef built last fall at the head of Fighting Island, across from Wyandotte, Mich., under an American-Canadian partnership. Sturgeon, considered an indicator of ecosystem health, are estimated at just one percent of their former numbers in the Detroit River. More