# An extinct fish is being reintroduced into Lake Erie **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 4, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408 "2025-12-04T17:50:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/1 "2025-12-04T17:50:34Z")
Those sturgeon fingerlings are pretty cute! > **[Lake sturgeon released in Cuyahoga River as Ohio expands recovery effort](https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/lake-sturgeon-released-in-cuyahoga-river-as-ohio-expands-recovery-effort)** > > Ohio wildlife officials have released thousands of juvenile lake sturgeon into four major rivers, including the Cuyahoga, as part of a growing statewide restoration effort. ---
**Author:** ![romansperson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/romansperson/32/17100_2.png) [@romansperson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/romansperson)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/2 "2025-12-04T17:59:57Z")
Oh, cool! I didn’t know until I read the article they can live to 100 years. Wow. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/3 "2025-12-04T18:15:25Z")
_Locally_ extinct, although overall endangered. This isn’t some sort of species-necromancy process. The babies are sort of cute! ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/4 "2025-12-04T18:45:09Z")
that is a nifty looking fish. i hope they do well. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/5 "2025-12-04T22:07:25Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > _Locally_ extinct, although overall endangered. This isn’t some sort of species-necromancy process. Yeah, the more correct (but _much_ less common) word is “extripated” > **[Something Wild: Extirpation - NOT Extinction](https://www.forestsociety.org/something-wild/extirpation-not-extinction)** ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/6 "2025-12-04T23:23:53Z")
Are sturgeon good to eat? Did they get extirpated from overfishing, or from pollution, or something else? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/7 "2025-12-04T23:35:36Z")
All of the above. > These fish were once killed as a nuisance by catch because they damaged fishing gear. When their meat and eggs became prized, commercial fishermen targeted them. Between 1879 and 1900, the Great Lakes commercial sturgeon fishery brought in an average of 4 million pounds (1,800 t) per year. Such unsustainable catch rates were coupled with environmental challenges, such as pollution and the construction of dams and other flood control measures. Sturgeon, which return each spring to spawn in the streams and rivers in which they were born, found tributaries blocked and spawning shoals destroyed by silt from agriculture and lumbering. In the 20th century, drastic drops in sturgeon catches, increased regulations, and the closure of viable fisheries occurred. Currently, 19 of the 20 states within the fish’s original U.S. range list it as either threatened or endangered.[[20]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-iucn1-20)[[21]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-redList-21) It is considered “Vulnerable” by [NatureServe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatureServe).[[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-NS-4) > > This sturgeon is a valuable gourmet food fish, as well as a source of specialty products including [caviar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caviar) and [isinglass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isinglass). “In 1860, this species, taken on incidental catches of other fishes, was killed and dumped back in the lake, piled up on shore to dry and be burned, fed to pigs, or dug into the earth as fertilizer.”[[22]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-Scott,_W.B_1972._p._88-22) It was even stacked like cordwood and used to fuel [steamboats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat). Once its value was realized, “They were taken by every available means from spearing and jigging to set lines of baited or unbaited hooks laid on the bottom to trap nets, pound nets and gillnets.”[[22]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-Scott,_W.B_1972._p._88-22) Over 5 million lb were taken from Lake Erie in a single year. The fishery collapsed, largely by 1900. It has never recovered. Like most sturgeons, the lake sturgeon is rare now and is protected in many areas.[[20]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-iucn1-20)[[21]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-redList-21) > > In addition to overharvesting, it has also been negatively affected by pollution and loss of migratory waterways. It is vulnerable to population declines through [overfishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing) due to its extremely slow reproductive cycle; most individuals caught before 20 years of age have never bred and females spawn only once every four or five years. The specific harvesting of breeding females for their [roe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe) is also damaging to population size. Few individuals ever reach the extreme old age or large size that those of previous generations often did.[[23]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon#cite_note-haenni-23) > **[Lake sturgeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_sturgeon)** > > The lake sturgeon (Huso fulvescens), also known as the rock sturgeon, is a North American temperate freshwater fish, one of 27 species of sturgeon. Like other sturgeons, this species is a bottom feeder and has a partly cartilaginous skeleton, an overall streamlined shape, and skin bearing rows of bony plates on the sides and back. > The lake sturgeon uses its elongated, spade-like snout to stir up the substrate and sediments on the beds of rivers and lakes to feed. Four sensory organs (barbels... ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-extinct-fish-is-being-reintroduced-into-lake-erie/1025408/8 "2025-12-04T23:40:01Z")
Yeah, thanks for googling that for me.