I Speak for the Fish: How Native Americans are saving lake sturgeon

I Speak for the Fish is a monthly column written by Great Lakes Now Contributor Kathy Johnson, coming out the third Monday of each month. Publishing the author’s views and assertions does not represent endorsement by Great Lakes Now or Detroit Public Television. Check out her previous columns.

In honor of National Native American Heritage Month, I thought I’d share the pivotal, but often overlooked, role Tribal communities have played in lake sturgeon restoration efforts in the Great Lakes.

In the early 2000s, when the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians in Manistee, MI, decided to start a lake sturgeon restoration program, they knew they would require some outside assistance, so they hired two recently graduated fisheries research biologists to help them set it up.

Marty Holtgren earned his master’s degree from Michigan Technological University, while Stephanie Ogren earned her master’s from Central Michigan University. Both went on to earn their doctorates from Michigan Tech.

Holtgren and Ogren had done extensive fieldwork with lake sturgeon, but neither had worked with Tribal communities. When they arrived in Manistee, they quickly learned that a Tribal restoration project needed to incorporate more than science to succeed.

“I remember getting there and starting a discussion and realizing that the scientific knowledge that I had was only a piece,” Holtgren said. “And what I learned from them, from them giving me their history and their knowledge of lake sturgeon, was that we needed to incorporate so much more into how we treated like sturgeon.”

It would take several years for the scientists and community to develop a program that would help lake sturgeon while simultaneously respecting the Tribe’s cultural concerns. More on how they achieved that in a minute.

While Holtgren and Ogren were helping to develop the Little River Band’s program, my husband and I were working with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to locate and later document the largest remaining lake sturgeon spawning sites in the Great Lakes.

We became experts in identifying suitable sturgeon spawning habitats and highly skilled at finding fertilized eggs on the bottom. In 2009, Holtgren called to ask if we could put those skills to use for the Tribe working on the Big Manistee River.

Joining the Tribal team

Little River Band staff members care for lake sturgeon in the streamside rearing facility. (Photo Credit: Greg Lashbrook/PolkaDot Perch)

Over the next few years, the drive from our home, a mile off of Lake Huron, to the Little River Band’s Natural Resources department, a mile from Lake Michigan, became routine.

We had the honor of documenting the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians lake sturgeon restoration program almost from inception. Our documentary, Manistee Nmé a Lake Sturgeon Success Story was screened at the international Save Our Waters film festival in Bangalore, India.

Over the years, we’ve worked on lake sturgeon projects with Fishes and Oceans Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Service, the National Park Service, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and Michigan Sea Grant.

I’ve seen some things.

Most notably, I’ve seen a cosmic shift from the Tribal program being mocked at fisheries conferences for the small number of fish being released, to the Tribal system being adopted as the standard for sturgeon restoration in the Great Lakes.

Researchers with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians wrap a cinder block with furnace filter material to collect lake sturgeon eggs. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Johnson)

The Tribal program deviated from the established methodology on nearly every step of the fish-rearing process.

Normally, if you want to rear fish you will need to acquire a bunch of fertilized eggs from adult fish. Those eggs are then hatched, raised in a facility, and released when they’re large enough to survive on their own. For most fish species, it works great.

Setlines are typically used for capturing adult lake sturgeon. This entails placing a rope on the bottom that is rigged every few feet with very large, baited hooks. The lines are often set one day and retrieved the next. If a sturgeon strikes the line an hour after it’s set, the fish could be on the hook for 20 or more hours before being released.

Researchers check the furnace filter material for fertilized lake sturgeon eggs. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Johnson)

Egg retrieval is done by placing the female on her back and requires three large humans to pin her down and forcibly remove the eggs. It’s slightly less abusive to retrieve the milt from the males.

Researchers split the eggs from each female between multiple stainless steel bowls and fertilized each bowl with a different male in an attempt to promote genetic diversity.

The fertilized eggs are then transported to a hatchery often in another state. For example, US Fish and Wildlife continues to take eggs from the Upper Saint Clair River population, transports them to a hatchery in Wisconsin, and then ships the juveniles back to Michigan for release into Saginaw Bay.

This is a good way to stock a lot of fish but the problem with the lake sturgeon is that they imprint on their natal rivers. That means that to reproduce naturally they must return to the same river where they hatched.

Hatchery-raised and stocked lake sturgeon can and do survive but they won’t just randomly pick a river and start spawning. That is not how it works! Stocking the Great Lakes with sturgeon that are not imprinted on any river may increase the overall number of adults in the system, but it will not ensure their long-term survival.

The Tribal Way

The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians updated their streamside rearing facility to a more permanent structure. (Photo Credit: Greg Lashbrook/PolkaDot Perch)

The majority of these accepted methods for lake sturgeon work violated the Little River Band’s beliefs. 

The Tribe had concerns with adult sturgeon being trapped on the river bottom for long periods, they did not approve of forcible egg takes, and they did not agree with artificial fertilization.

The Tribe wanted the fish to reproduce on their own in the river naturally. Only after that could the scientists intervene.

Holtgren and Ogren copied a Canadian researcher who was using a concrete cinder block wrapped with blue furnace filter material to harvest fertilized eggs off the bottom.

Of the hundreds of thousands of eggs deposited, only about 1 percent will typically survive to hatch because fish, turtles, and crayfish all love caviar. So, most eggs get eaten by whatever swims by or crawls by first.

Lake sturgeon are raised inside the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians streamside facility. (Photo Credit: Greg Lashbrook/PolkaDot Perch)

By collecting and protecting fertilized eggs, the Tribe could significantly increase the early survival rates without any adverse effects on the natural process. Other than robbing a few critters of an easy meal.

Researchers at Michigan State University are working diligently to determine exactly when and how the lake sturgeon imprint. Presumably, it occurs immediately after hatching.

For the Little River Band, it was critical the sturgeon knew where they came from, so they could return.

Greg Lashbrook films lake sturgeon releases at a Little River Band of Ottawa Indians event. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Johnson)

The Tribe’s research team devised a brilliant Post-it note solution. They parked a small trailer beside the river and modified a lawn irrigation system to pump water through small holding tanks inside the trailer and then back out to the river. 

This allowed the eggs to hatch in Big Manistee River water. It also provided for some natural food and temperature fluctuations while eliminating all possibility of predation.

Streamside rearing facilities have come a long way since that first small trailer but have proven to be extremely successful. In the wild, from hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs only a handful will reach adulthood. Streamside facilities are flipping the odds in the sturgeon’s favor.

One of the Little River Band’s final mandates was that the project could be easily and inexpensively replicated by any group, anywhere. At last count, there were 14 streamside facilities around the Great Lakes with more being launched each year.

Each time a new facility is started there is a lot of media coverage which often gives the impression this is a new and novel idea of whatever group is running  it. 

But let’s give credit where the credit is due. When it comes to streamside facilities, the glory goes to the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

Catch more news at Great Lakes Now:

I Speak for the Fish: Where’s the line in fisheries research?

I Speak for the Fish: A Sturgeon goes to Wisconsin and a Michigan muskie visits New York

Featured image: Kathy Johnson releases a lake sturgeon at a Little River Band of Ottawa Indians event. (Photo Credit: Greg Lashbrook/PolkaDot Perch)