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A Good Start to Renewed Telemetry Efforts on the Lower Missouri River

By Marlene Dodson, Killian Kelly, and Aaron DeLonay

November 4, 2019

The USGS in collaboration with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) assisted in the tagging and transfer of adult pallid sturgeon collected for broodstock and held at USFWS Neosho National Fish Hatchery and USFWS Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery back to the Lower Missouri River on Thursday and Friday, October 24th and 25th, 2019. USGS biologists and a fish transport truck retrieved two pallid sturgeon and one pallid x shovelnose sturgeon hybrid on Thursday morning from the USFWS Neosho National Fish Hatchery and returned them with transmitters to the nearest boat ramp to the point of original capture (Waverly and Cooley Lake, Missouri).  On Friday morning at 8:00 AM, USGS biologists met NGPC biologists with two fish transport trucks at the USFWS Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery to implant 12 additional pallid sturgeon with transmitters.  Surgical procedures included the implantation of acoustic transmitters, visual identification of sex and reproductive stage, blood collection for sex and reproductive stage, and egg biopsies, for reproductive females.  In addition, reproductively cycling sturgeon of known sex weighing greater than 3.0 kilograms received an archival data storage tag (DST) programmed to record depth (as pressure) and temperature.  Blood was also taken in cooperation with fish condition studies by Montana State University and Bozeman Fish Technical Center.  Surgeries were completed by noon.  The three trucks returned all fish to the Missouri River at the boat ramp nearest to their point of original capture by 8:00 pm.

Pallid sturgeon used in the propagation program and subsequently conditioned before release at participating hatcheries are extremely valuable fish for the evaluation of spawning success and response to environmental cues, such as flows or temperature.  A total of 12 of the 15 implanted sturgeon are of known sex and are reproductively cycling with known recent spawning histories.  Six of the pallid sturgeon implanted at Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery were early stage IV, black egg females.  There is now a total of seven possible reproductive females for 2020 with transmitters, including a hatchery-origin female implanted earlier in the fall by NGPC biologists.  The seven females are spread through the river between St. Joseph, Missouri and Yankton, South Dakota.   Several of the males will likely be reproductive as well, though male readiness is more difficult to determine this far out from spawning season.  In comparison to previous years’ studies, this is a substantial early surge in the number of fish available to respond to environmental cues for spring of 2020.

Nebraska Game and Parks Biologist, Ryan Ruskamp examines an adult pallid sturgeon to determine sex and reproductive condition
Nebraska Game and Parks Biologist, Ryan Ruskamp examines an adult pallid sturgeon to determine sex and reproductive condition during telemetry tagging efforts at the USFWS Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery