Lake Sturgeon

• The lake sturgeon is the largest freshwater fish in the world and is considered a living fossil because it has survived—virtually unchanged—for over 100 million years.
• Lake sturgeon are bottom-feeders with a partly cartilaginous skeleton and skin bearing rows of bony plates.
• It uses its elongated, spadelike snout to stir up the sand and silt on the beds of rivers and lakes while feeding. Barbels surrounding the mouth help it sense and manipulate food.
• The lake sturgeon has taste buds on and around its barbels near its rubbery, prehensile lips. It extends its lips to vacuum up soft live food, which it swallows whole due to its lack of teeth. Its diet consists of insect larvae, worms (including leeches), and small fish.
• Lake sturgeon can grow to weigh an astonishing 300 pounds, and can live to be nearly 200 years old.
• At one point, lake sturgeon was so plentiful that it represented 90% of the Great Lakes biomass.
• In the late 1800s, due to over-fishing and the destruction and pollution of their spawning beds, lake sturgeon populations in the Great Lakes crashed.
• Lake sturgeon will travel great distances over their lifetimes, but will always return to the streams in which they hatched to spawn.
• The lake sturgeon is a threatened species in many areas.