UGA researchers are working to understand why the nation’s largest freshwater fish, the white sturgeon, is struggling in northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta, an environmentally endangered area suffering from declining fish populations and pollution.
Doug Peterson and Robert Bringolf, both with the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, have begun work on the one-year, $200,000 joint project funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bringolf plans to perform a preliminary screening of the contaminants in fish tissue to determine which are accumulating in the sturgeon. He’ll also examine gonad histology to determine if those contaminants are altering the structure or function of the sturgeon’s reproductive ability. It is possible, he said, that the male fish are becoming “feminized,” and are developing eggs in their testes from chemical exposure.
While Bringolf is checking for contaminants, Peterson will evaluate the swimming performance of white sturgeon under various environmental conditions. Determining sturgeon swimming ability is key to research into their survival, Peterson explained.
The results of these experiments will be used to design sampling protocols for a much broader study of the wild population in subsequent years.
Peterson plans to transport about 100 of the 35-pound sturgeons to his research lab at the 65-acre Cohutta Fisheries Center in northwest Georgia, where his team plans to use a high-tech swimming chamber that resembles a “fish racetrack” that will allow researchers to measure swimming ability through a calibrated viewing window.
