This article is from the winter 2024 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Nick Williams
Even though I’m a lifelong Gulf Coast resident and committed angler (committed enough that I host a weekly fishing report podcast), I’ve never had the pleasure of actually seeing a Gulf Sturgeon for myself. Information on these species is scarce, but recently I was able to learn more about these fish and the issues that they face thanks to an extremely informative interview with prominent author and biologist R. Scot Duncan.
Duncan, who is the executive director of Alabama Audubon, is better known by most as the author of the extremely popular and informative Southern Wonder and Southern Rivers books. The Gulf Sturgeon features prominently in the second title, and Scot weaves a fascinating story around the fish, the waters it inhabits, and the myriad threats that they both face.
Scot’s relationship with sturgeon began literally before he was born. His family has deep roots along Pensacola Bay, and sturgeon were once an important part of his family’s lives.
“Sturgeon were always a mysterious, kind of scary-sounding species to me,” he confides. “As a little kid, I heard about my great-great-uncle, who was a commercial sturgeon fisherman in Escambia and later in Choctawhatchee Bay. I always heard stories about him and the things he caught in his nets, but I never really understood what sturgeon were until much later in life.
“Sturgeon are incredible fish. They go way back in the fossil record — well over 100 million years — and they look kind of prehistoric as well. They’re long, large fish with bony scutes on their backs that help protect them from predators. They have a tail called a heterocercal tail, which is shaped like a shark’s, and a long snout with little fleshy barbels hanging off the end. These help them tickle the bottom and find prey.
“Very few people have ever seen a sturgeon, even those who have spent their lives on rivers and bays. I only saw my first sturgeon in the wild about five or six years ago when I was visiting my parents at Pensacola Bay. I was looking out over the water when a seven-foot sturgeon leapt into the air right in front of me. I’ll never forget that moment.”
Days of Plenty
But it hasn’t always been that way.
“Gulf Sturgeon were once abundant enough,” Scot continues, “that during their spring migrations up the rivers, some historical descriptions claim you could walk across the river on their backs. I’m not sure how much of that is exaggerated, but here’s what I do know: when the English colony of Jamestown was on the verge of failure due to starvation, largely because the settlers were focused on searching for gold rather than learning to farm or live off the land like the Native Americans, the sturgeon migrations saved them. At first, they ignored the sturgeon, but seeing the Native Americans harvesting 60 or 70 at a time, they realized their mistake. The colonists then went into the shallows near Jamestown and began spearing sturgeon with their swords or clubbing them with frying pans and skillets.
“For that to be successful, there must have been a massive number of sturgeon in the river. From the historical accounts of how Native Americans sourced food, to the early European settlements along the coast, there’s plenty of evidence that sturgeon were incredibly abundant in our rivers. Later, as we entered the age of commercial sturgeon harvesting, it became even clearer just how many sturgeon were out there.”
Death of a Giant
Scot continues, “So, Jamestown story aside, for the most part, early Europeans and later Americans on the continent largely ignored sturgeon. There was some fishing for them, but the meat wasn’t highly regarded. Some of it was sent to places like New York, where immigrant populations were happy to buy affordable meat, and some was shipped to sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean to feed enslaved people. But overall, sturgeon were overlooked until around 1870.
“In 1870, a German immigrant named Bendix Blom figured out how to cure the eggs of Atlantic Sturgeon to make caviar. By that time, the East Coast was well developed, and he had markets to sell to, making a lot of money. Others quickly took notice, and a commercial fishing industry sprang up on the Atlantic coast. Initially, this industry focused on areas near major East Coast cities, primarily in the Northeast. Within just a few years, they had fished out the local Atlantic Sturgeon populations.
“As sturgeon populations in the Northeast collapsed, the commercial fishing industry moved south — first to Virginia, then through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Eventually, after depleting sturgeon populations along the East Coast, they turned to the Gulf Sturgeon, starting around Tampa and working their way north and west, leading to the overfishing of Gulf Sturgeon as well.
“So, Bendix figured out how to cure sturgeon eggs in 1870, and just 50 years later, by 1920, the entire commercial sturgeon fishing industry had collapsed because there weren’t enough sturgeon left in any rivers to sustain American caviar production. In just 50 years, we overfished these populations. Fortunately, because this all happened in an era when careful records were kept, we have accurate documentation of the tons of sturgeon pulled from the rivers, if not the exact number of fish.”
Failure to Recover
Today, Gulf Sturgeon are a protected species. Many other species that were hunted or fished to near-collapse have rebounded, but sturgeon haven’t. The question is, why?
“So … it’s not due to overfishing anymore” Scot says. Gulf Sturgeon were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in the early 1990s. There are many threats facing sturgeon, including legacy chemicals in the sediments, like PCBs and heavy metals, as well as heavy sediment loads from erosion and runoff. These are significant threats, but the biggest problem for sturgeon, and the reason they haven’t fully recovered over the last century, is the construction of dams on our rivers.
“Before World War II, there were smaller dams on rivers, but after the war, we really began damming every large creek and river for various reasons, including hydropower production, water storage, and irrigation. From a fish’s perspective, though, a dam is a wall between where they are and where they need to be to spawn. By cutting off access to headwater streams — areas with shallow, clear, rocky water where young sturgeon can survive — dams made it impossible in some rivers, and very difficult in others, for sturgeon populations to thrive.
“For example, the Suwannee River has the strongest Gulf Sturgeon population, and guess what? There are no dams on the Suwannee. There was never enough industrial development in the area to justify it. While the Suwannee has lost 40 percent of its flow due to groundwater pumping for agriculture, it still has enough water to support the sturgeon population because there are no dams, allowing them access to spawning areas.”
Dredging’s Threat to Mobile Bay
The recent discovery of wintering populations of Gulf Sturgeon in Mobile Bay are at the heart of conversations between Mobile Baykeeper and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the recent deepening and widening project on the Bay’s ship channel, and the 20-year dredge maintenance plan. It also sparked numerous other discussions between pro-business and pro-environment groups. On one hand, some see the project as yet another disastrous blow being delivered to an already beleaguered ecosystem. On the other are those who see it as an economic lifeline to a region that has historically lagged far behind the rest of the country.
In Scot’s mind, these two views aren’t mutually exclusive.
“We want to see the Port of Mobile thrive,” Scot stresses. “We want to see the shipbuilding and ship repair industries continue to grow. But at the same time, the current shipping channel has already caused significant damage to the Bay, and dredging it again will only add more. You get a lot of different impacts from having a long, deep canal cut through a shallow, large bay. There’s the immediate loss of habitat that had begun to recover in the area of the ship channel or in areas where it’s being expanded. Then there’s the issue of where to put all the dredged sediment. Often, it’s pumped offshore or into other parts of the Bay, covering existing habitats.
“The dredging process stirs up sediment, making the water much more turbid (muddy). That sediment is often laced with contaminants like heavy metals from the days when we were more careless with chemicals, particularly during and after World War II in the shipbuilding industry. These toxins can resuspend and threaten not only fish but also the people who eat them, along with shrimp and crabs. Additionally, the dredging creates noise and disturbance for marine life, making an already busy environment even louder, which can be highly disorienting for various species.
“Then, you’ve got the shipping channel allowing deeper waters from the Gulf of Mexico, which are high in salt and low in oxygen, to reach far into the Bay. When this water gets into the upper sections of the Bay and spills into marsh areas, it causes a lot of damage. Some fish can’t survive in such low-oxygen waters, and the vegetation in the Delta suffers from exposure to high salt levels, which aren’t natural for them. This only adds to the damage in an ecosystem that has already faced decades of struggle.
“Finding the balance between maintaining industry and allowing the Bay and its ecosystems to rebuild is a tough challenge” Scot summarizes. “It’s something we have to face and put our resources into. We can find a solution, but we have to be firm in our commitment to achieving it.”
The Conservation Challenge
While there is now undeniable proof that Gulf Sturgeon reside in the Bay, dams block the migration of sturgeon up the Mobile River Basin and all its large rivers, from the Tombigbee to the Tallapoosa. Assuming that we can protect the Bay population from the effects of mud dumping, will future generations ever be able to witness the legendary sturgeon runs?
“There’s a chance,” Scot says with a mix of caution and hope in his voice. “Maybe we’re the last generation for which there’s a real chance. What happens is that during the winter, after the adults have had their spawning run, or during years when they’re taking a break, they move offshore, away from the river mouths, into places like Mobile Bay or the Gulf waters. They wander where the food is but always come back for their spawning run to the river where they were hatched.
“Now, the problem for the Mobile River basin is that, back in the day, sturgeon were found throughout the region, even up to Centerville, Alabama. That all came to a halt in 1969 with the building of the Claiborne Dam on the Alabama River, which blocks access to the spawning grounds. Then, in 1970, the Millers Ferry Dam was completed upstream, making it even harder for sturgeon to survive. For the last 54 or 55 years, sturgeon in the Mobile River basin have been unable to reach their spawning grounds.
“So, could they ever come back? There are two potential biological ways, and maybe a couple of engineering solutions. Fortunately, the Alabama chapter of The Nature Conservancy has partnered with the Army Corps of Engineers to study options for restoring fish migrations, including sturgeon, around the Claiborne and Millers Ferry dams. This isn’t just about sturgeon — it’s about other fish species that also make sea-run reproductive migrations. The Army Corps has settled on the idea of a fish bypass: a shallow channel around the dam with a low enough gradient for fish to swim upstream.
“This has never been done in the Southeast, but it’s been successful in other parts of the world. The question is whether it will work here, where rivers are wide and slow-moving due to the Coastal Plain. It’s an important experiment to see if it could work, and the bypasses would be built on existing federal lands, so no private land would need to be acquired. The next step is for Congress to approve the budget for the projects. There are big challenges, but the key is we have a plan, a vision, and partners ready to make it happen.”
“That leads to the question: Are there any sturgeon left to make these migrations? It’s estimated that Gulf sturgeon can live around 50 years, so it’s possible some young sturgeon hatched around the time of the dam construction are still in the Mobile Bay ecosystem and could move upstream if given the chance. Recent studies using environmental DNA (eDNA) have detected Gulf Sturgeon DNA both below and above the Claiborne Dam, indicating that some are still moving up the rivers during spawning season. Is it one fish or a hundred? Nobody knows, but it suggests there are remnants of the population that could begin to rebuild.
“There’s also a second biological possibility: Some sturgeon might make migration runs up other rivers. It’s rare, but over tens of thousands of years, sturgeon have occasionally explored adjacent rivers, helping them colonize new waterways. This might happen with populations from nearby rivers, such as the Pearl, Pascagoula, Escambia, or Yellow Rivers, contributing to the recovery of sturgeon in the Mobile River Basin.
“As for engineering solutions, besides the fish bypasses, another option would be to remove the dams entirely. Without the dams, sturgeon and other fish could freely move upstream. Over time, we’ll know whether the fish bypasses work. If not, dam removal might be necessary to restore fish migrations.”
“So, I do have hope. It’s guarded hope — not overly optimistic — but if this is ever going to happen, it has to happen now. This is our moment to bring back the sturgeon in the Mobile River Basin.”
