introducing mr. sturgeon

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is making an effort to bring lake sturgeon back into Tennessee waters.

In recent months the TWRA has released these prehistoric fish at designated sites in an effort to replenish Tennessee lakes and return the fish to a “common status”, according to a recent TWRA press release.

This was not the first sturgeon released in Tennessee, however. The agency has actually been releasing the fish in East Tennessee for several years now.

According to the Region IV office of the TWRA, more than 29,500 lake sturgeons have been stocked into the French Broad and Holston Rivers downstream of Douglas and Cherokee Reservoirs since 2000.

It is believed, according to a TWRA press release, that fishing pressure and the changes in Tennessee river flows with the various locks and dams throughout the river system—combined with a n extremely long reproductive cycle—helped cause the sturgeon’s disappearance.

The lake sturgeon is an ancient bottom-feeding fish with a cartilaginous skeleton and skin that bears rows of bony plates, barbells surround a sturgeon’s mouth and help it to both sense and manipulate food. It has taste buds on and around its barbells near its rubbery, prehensile lips and extends its lips to vacuum up soft food which it swallows whole due to its lack of teeth.

The lake sturgeon’s diet consists of insect larvae, worms, leeches, small fish and other organisms it finds in the mud.

Lake sturgeons can grow to 200 pounds and more than six-feet in length. They can live to be 100 years old, but don’t reach sexual maturity until they are 20 to 30 years old.