Sturgeon Fest + Sea Scouts

Last post I was praising my very cool local sewer district’s Clean Water Fest. This post I am going to praise our fantastic Cleveland Metroparks’ Sturgeon Fest on October 4th where I tabled for the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “So, what exactly is going on at Sturgeon Fest?” was a question I got a lot in advance of the event when I tried to hype it up with people. It was an understandable question.

What are sturgeon? Sturgeon are large, prehistoric fish that are not cute. They are known for their bony, armor-like exterior and can grow to excesses of 6 feet and 100 pounds. They have lived in the Great Lakes for over 100 million years, feeding along the lake bottom where they eat smaller fish. They have incredibly long life spans for a fish, often in the range of 50-75 years.

Why was there a festival for them? The festival celebrated two interrelated things. One was the return of sturgeon to the Cuyahoga River. They used to be common in the Great Lakes and watershed areas, but overfishing, pollution and ecologic imbalance more or less eradicated them. Sturgeon Fest was one of several fish stocking events around Lake Erie this year. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Fish Hatchery truck arrived in advance of the event, and baby sturgeon were moved into tanks and then one by one into buckets. Visitors could participate in sending baby sturgeon down small slides, into the river. The hope is that they make their way out into Lake Erie for several years and then return to the Cuyahoga River to spawn although some of them may take their time. Females often don’t lay eggs until they are 14-33 years old.

So, it may be a while before Sammy Sturgeon, who my volunteer partner Amy and I sent on their way down the slide, returns to the river.

The second celebration was that the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie have been restored to the point where they can be sturgeon habitat. The festival was at Rivergate Park, in the Irishtown Bend area of the Cuyahoga River, not far from where it was famously on fire in the 1970s. But sturgeon require highly oxygenated water to survive and high oxygen levels correlate with good water quality. While still facing environmental challenges, the river has been rehabilitated with credit going to the Environmental Protection Agency and as testament to the power of regulation in some situations.

How was the festival? The festival was a big success! More than 1,400 people attended and over 750 baby sturgeon were released. My Alliance for the Great Lakes table was heavily trafficked for about two and a half hours. It was a joy to talk with so many people, including a lot of people from the Ohio fishing community, which I don’t interact with a ton. Many of them were fretting about the heat and dry weather we’ve had this fall. It’s substantially disrupting standard fall fish dynamics and lowering water levels in rivers resulting in poor fishing conditions.

One of the neatest things that I learned at the festival was not about sturgeon. I met a woman who helps lead a Sea Scouts “ship” in a lakefront suburb west of Cleveland. I was not familiar with this program that is part of Scouting America. The program is for youth ages 14 to 20 and is designed to promote citizenship, improve boating skills, and immerse young people in maritime history and life. As you can imagine, I loved it when three of the sea scouts came by my table and they were all young women.

Sturgeon Excitement + Sea Scouts = Just Good Stuff. Do your thing. Whatever it is.