Sturgeon No. 985120031641132 Makes Historic Milwaukee River Journey
First sturgeon in more than a century spotted in Ozaukee County.
Three-year-old Gavin Gies releases a fingerling lake sturgeon in the Milwaukee River in 2011. Fifteen years later, the lake sturgeon made a historic journey back to the river navigating the waters all the way to Ozaukee County. Photo courtesy of Riveredge Nature Center
Each morning, the first thing fisheries biologist Aaron Schiller does is check his underwater web cam for any sign of a lake sturgeon.
Known by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as “a living fossil,” the prehistoric freshwater fish has been around for at least 150 million years. But in the 1900s, it was rendered extinct in the Milwaukee River due to overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution and dam construction.
That’s why on March 30, when Schiller saw a lake sturgeon in Ozaukee County at the Mequon-Thiensville Dam, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“We’ve been monitoring this for years and we have not seen any sturgeon make it up that far,” he told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
In fact, there hasn’t been a record of a lake sturgeon in Ozaukee County for more than a century. The detection was a hopeful sign that a 20-year restoration effort is making inroads.
Journey of No. 985120031641132
The lake sturgeon detected in Ozaukee County — 20 river miles upstream of Lake Michigan — is part of a wider effort to restore sturgeon to the Milwaukee River through the Return the Sturgeon Project. The project is a partnership between the Riveredge Nature Center in Saukville, Wisconsin DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
So far the project has released 22,000 sturgeon in the Milwaukee River, including the fish found in Ozaukee County.
Fingerling lake sturgeon as part of the Return the Sturgeon Project. Photo courtesy of Aaron Schiller
Fifteen years ago, this particular fish started out as a fingerling in a riverside pen, growing and gaining olfactory imprinting — which essentially imprints the sturgeon with the chemical mineral composition of the Milwaukee River, making it easier for the fish to find home.
In 2011 when 3-year-old Gavin Gies released the fish at the Theinsville dam, no one knew if it would return to the river or not. Lake sturgeon spend the majority of their lives in Lake Michigan and return to the river once they reach spawning age between 15 and 25 years old.
In the case of the Ozaukee County fish, tagged No. 985120031641132, it returned to the river and made its way through a fishway to navigate around the Mequon-Thiensville Dam, Schiller said.
A lake sturgeon fingerling. Photo courtesy of Andrew Struck
According to Andrew Struck, the director of the Planning and Parks Department for Ozaukee County, this fish is only about 10 river miles away from ideal spawning conditions in the Village of Grafton.
“That area upstream of the former Lime Kiln Dam (which was removed in 2010) is mainly fractured bedrock so you can see a lot of rocky substrate and large fractured bedrock at the surface, and this is what the sturgeon like. And a little bit of swift-moving area to keep those eggs clean and not sedimented over,” he said. “We have probably about a mile stretch of this type of habitat.”
Although the fish made history by making its way up to Ozaukee County, it isn’t the first sturgeon to return home from the project. According to the Ozaukee Press in 2021, three sturgeon were detected in the river in Milwaukee County.
A young lake sturgeon. Photo courtesy the National Digital Library of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Lake sturgeon have historical and cultural significance to the area, so progress in their restoration is thrilling. Schiller said because sturgeon are so large and charismatic, biologists can use the fish to educate the public on river health and the larger ecosystem of eastern Wisconsin.
“If we’re improving the watershed and passage for lake sturgeon we’re also improving it for white suckers, smallmouth bass, northern pike, and a lot the non-game species that don’t get a lot of attention,” Schiller said.
That’s a win-win.
For the first time in a century, lake sturgeon spotted in Ozaukee County was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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