CBL Professor Dr. David Secor is co-leading the Chesapeake Sturgeon Initiative, a project that seeks to discover what a fish that swam with dinosaurs and fed Jamestown colonists needs to survive in the Chesapeake Bay today.
In the late 90s, researchers were concerned that the Atlantic sturgeon (right) had become regionally extinct — large adult sturgeons hadn’t been seen in the Bay since 1976. Yet despite their long apparent absence and sensitivity to the Bay’s poor water quality, in the past 10 years this endangered species has been observed spawning in the James and York Rivers, which flow into the lower Chesapeake.
To determine why they returned, Secor and his partners, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science will surgically implant tags (left) in about 100 sturgeons. These tags’ “pings” are recorded as the fish swim past receivers that researchers have deployed at various locations in the Bay and its tributaries. Secor and his research team are monitoring receivers throughout Maryland tidal waters.
CBL researchers will build a sturgeon habitat preference model that uses the location of tagged sturgeons and environmental conditions such as water quality and oxygen levels to predict where the best habitats for sturgeons to reproduce, hatch, and feed are in the Chesapeake, and when sturgeon use them.
Understanding when, where, and how sturgeon use the Bay as a habitat and what environmental conditions are critical to their survival will help identify what they need to make a full recovery in the Bay. Secor’s research will provide improved science in linking the unexpected recovery of sturgeon to efforts to improve Chesapeake Bay health.
