Ron Ek, Senior Fish Culturist helps kids release juvenile sturgeon (David R. Gluns/UCWSRI photo) Contact us to participate in future white sturgeon releases!

As a conservation measure to help rebuild the upper Columbia River white sturgeon population, the Initiative has raised and released juvenile white sturgeon into the upper Columbia River. Releases have been made at key locations between Keenleyside Dam and the Canada/US border since 2002. The spring of 2006 marks the fifth year Initiative partners, families, local area school children and community have helped in releasing several of approximately 10,000 - 12,000 juvenile white sturgeon annually in to the Columbia River. Since spring 2004, the technical staff at the Columbia Basin Hatchery in Moses Lake, Washington state has released share in the rearing and release of upper Columbia white sturgeon families into the Lake Roosevelt Reach area.

Since 2003, participants involved in the "White Sturgeon Hatchery Release Event" were provided a small card which noted the fish tag number for the young fish each helped to release. As these fish are encountered over the course of months and years of monitoring, the encounters of these fish are recorded and results posted to under the Sturgeon Findings of this web site.

Typically researchers will first encounter tagged fish about 4-6 months following their initial release and occasionally thereafter through regular monitoring programs. Some of the tagged juvenile sturgeon may be encountered during various river monitoring programs such as dive and net surveys. Each fish encountered is measured for growth in length and weight and scanned for the passive integrated transponder (PIT tag) that it contains. Capture location and date information are also recorded.

Finding the particular fish that you or your family released can take a very long time! So please be patient! These fish are only at the very start of a very long life ahead and the upper Columbia River is a really big place for them to live. Remember, white sturgeon can live for more than 100 hundred years so there are many years of chances ahead for your fish to be encountered in the river by our researchers!

Go to STURGEON FINDINGS to see if we’ve encountered your fish.