Fisheries Holds Annual Sampling for Lake Sturgeon Restoration

The Fisheries Division staff finished up their annual lake sturgeon monitoring in December as part of the agencies ongoing restoration efforts to bring a self-sustaining population back to Tennessee. The project began in the early 2000’s and has seen over 300,000 lake sturgeon being stocked into the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers after they were extirpated by the 1970s due to poor water quality, habitat fragmentation and unregulated fishing.

This year, staff from the Biodiversity and Law Enforcement assisted the Fisheries Division with the effort. Others involved included biologists from the Tennessee Valley Authority, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and University of Tennessee. According to Brandon Simcox, Rivers and Streams Coordinator, 87 lake sturgeon were collected during two weeks of sampling on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers that will provide valuable data on growth, condition, movement, genetics and ultimately population size. Since 2011, biologists have captured and released nearly 820 lake sturgeon during monitoring.