Sturgeon Guard Recap

To start off, I will go over a recap of Chad and my service learning project. That is I will briefly describe what we did and were we went. Our service learning project was Sturgeon Guard. We were working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural resources in their attempt to protect these prehistoric creatures during their long and tough journey up the streams and rivers to bread every spring. These fish are especially vulnerable during this time of the year because of the tremendous strains that are put on them in terms of making the long trek up the river and going through with the acts of spawning. It was our job to see that there were no outside forces tampering with their missions because they are unable to protect themselves. The sturgeons journey up stream is a long one but once they have reached their spawning grounds they will find a fish of the opposite sex and spawn for hours until they have finished then they return to the lake or river system where they had originally came from.
I learned a lot from this experience. It was quite amazing to see such things happening in the wild instead of only hearing about it in lab and lecture. It was interesting seeing it and noticing things that you wouldn’t normally think of. One such thing is the actual act of breading. The sturgeon breed externally which mean that the female release the eggs and then the male releases the sperm on them in the rocks. I had never seen this until this project and it was really cool. The female would appear first and would come up into as shallow of water as she could on top of rocks. The females were normally bigger than the male and averaged between 5 and 6 feet long. Then not long after the male, which was normally between 3 and 4 feet long would swim up right next to her as close as possible. The female would then release her eggs into the water and immediately after, the male would begin to shake violently and releasing his sperm. I’m not sure what the purpose of the shaking was but I would imagine it was to stir up the eggs and the sperm and make sure they fertilize. Then after it was all over with, the two, or sometimes more fish, would drift off into the deeper water only to return minutes later and repeat the process.
It was unbelievable how this project can be applied to bio 160. I could recognize a lot of aspects of reproduction we went over in class and had a much better understanding of the situation prior to getting there because of class. Having done this project, I was able to apply what I had learned in Bio 160 to the real world.