whitesturgeon.jpg

When sonar picked up a large mass at the bottom of the Columbia River earlier this year, scientists feared that part of the nearby Bonneville Dam had started eroding away. However, when the dive team they sent in got down to the riverbed, what they found surprised everyone: a massive ball of 60,000 or more white sturgeon, some more than 14-feet long.

The mountain of white sturgeon contained around 60,000 fish, according to a rough estimate by Michael Parsley, a research fisheries biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Columbia River Research Laboratory in Cook, Skamania County. He described that estimate as “probably conservative.”

It was an aquatic phenomenon nobody had ever seen at such a monstrous scale, offering a startling glimpse into the life of the Columbia’s largest and most ancient fish. If the estimates are anywhere near correct, the congregation of sturgeon may represent 5 to 10 percent of all the white sturgeon in the lower Columbia River, Parsley said. The conclave apparently broke up in March as the corps increased water releases through the dam to help salmon.

Sturgeon are no punks, man. They can live to be OVER A HUNDERD!