Collaborative efforts lead to the Atlantic sturgeon’s ‘great return’ to the Chesapeake Bay
August 2026
Biologist Matt Balazik (left) and Chuck Frederickson of the James River Association conduct sturgeon research.
by D. Hunter Reardon, Contributing Writer
Just one year after the Chesapeake Bay population of Atlantic sturgeon was officially listed as endangered in 2012, a surprising message appeared on the Maryland Anglers’ Log, an online journal for Marylanders to share fish stories and photos.
Randy Rowland, a recreational fisherman, wrote: “My good friend and fishing buddy, Bill Harris, and I were carp fishing on the Marshyhope [Creek], minding our own business, when this sturgeon decided to jump in the boat. We were both shocked to say the least! … We saw and/or heard seven other sturgeon jump on this same day.”
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources responded to Rowland and Harris and then had a hard time reaching them directly.
“We had to convince them to let us know where they were fishing, because they thought they might be in trouble,” says Ashlee Horne, anadromous restoration project leader for the Maryland DNR. She adds, “Eventually, Bill Harris told us he had been going out to Marshyhope to fish and watch sturgeon jump for a really long time.”
Albert Spells, a retired biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, holds Atlantic sturgeon caught on the Chesapeake Bay during seasonal monitoring of populations. “They’ve seen a lot of stuff,” Spells says of the species. “I think there will always be a pocket of sturgeon somewhere.”
PREHISTORY IN THE PRESENT
It’s a very old fish tale, this story about a robust species that can grow up to 14 feet long and weigh up to 800 pounds.
Though humans have lived in the mid-Atlantic region for about 20,000 years, the sturgeon thrived here more than 120 million years ago — some 50 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex trod the Earth.
“When the James River was formed, there was likely sturgeon there,” says Albert Spells, a retired biologist formerly with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. “These fish are millions and millions of years old.”
At the turn of the 20th century, though, the ray-finned fish that had survived the Cretaceous extinction met a challenge even bigger than a meteor: mankind. By the 1910s, the fish was nearly wiped out on the Eastern seaboard by overfishing.
“After the Civil War, immigrants from certain European countries came over and said, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s like a gold mine here,’” says Matt Balazik, conservation biologist for Virginia Commonwealth University. “They knew how to produce caviar and how to smoke the fish well … and they thought it was an inexhaustible resource.”
Today, the sturgeon are rebounding throughout the bay and its tributaries. Active spawning has been documented in Maryland’s Marshyhope Creek and Virginia’s James and Pamunkey rivers. After first documenting the species’ activity there nearly two decades ago, biologists have since tagged more than 2,500 sturgeon in the James.
Each September, the James River Association offers sightseeing tours to watch sturgeon breach in the lower James, a cinematic sight that occurs when spawning males get overly excited and launch themselves into the air.
So, how did the fish go from functionally extinct in the Chesapeake Bay to doing backflips for spectators in the span of approximately 25 years?
Well, Spells says, “They seem to be very resilient animals.”
Sturgeon can leap impressively high, launching their massive bodies anywhere from 6 to 10 feet out of the water. (Stan Belback photo)
SPAWNING GROUNDS
Sturgeon can live up to 60 years. Often, they do not start spawning until they are around 20 years old, usually in late April or late September, Horne says. The fish spend most of their lives in the ocean but return to spawn in freshwater — typically, in the same rivers where they were born.
Balazik explains that the fish possibly needs nearly perfect conditions for successful spawning. “They like to lay their eggs on clean cobble and gravel, even boulder — something that’s firm and doesn’t have a lot of sediment on it,” he says.
If fertilized eggs sink to the bottom, they can end up under sediment and deprived of the waterflow and oxygen they need to survive.
Jamie Brunkow, director of advocacy and river ecology for the JRA, points toward water quality as the major reason for “the great return” of the Atlantic sturgeon. A multistate plan established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 set specific limits on pollutants flowing into the Chesapeake Bay watershed — a conservation effort that helps elevate dissolved oxygen in tributaries.
“Across the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed, there has been massive investment in wastewater treatment upgrades,” Brunkow says, which returns clean, treated water to waterways.
Margi Whitmore, the tidal rivers project lead for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, says water flow is also critical for sturgeon reproduction. “One of the biggest things is precipitation and access to freshwater spawning habitat,” she says. Rivers need to run high enough for adult fish to spawn and larvae to grow upstream of the salt front.
In concert with these efforts has been habitat restoration. During the early 2010s, VCU and the JRA partnered to build three underwater spawning reefs in the lower James River.
With spawning activity confirmed in the James and Pamunkey, researchers are looking to find young-of-year Atlantic sturgeon — babies — which signal reproduction.
One of DWR’s next priorities, Whitmore says, is to expand its research in the Rappahannock River, where fishermen say they’ve released Atlantic sturgeon from their nets with other bycatch. Males streaming milt have been caught and others have been seen breaching upstream.
“There’s kind of the convergence of all of these things that just make it very likely that they’re spawning in there,” she says. It requires confirmation, though, and until grant funding becomes available to support the project, she says, DWR biologists will seek to combine efforts with other research teams.
“We’re looking at ways that we can do it,” Whitmore says. “It just means that we’re having to collaborate more closely, like pool what resources we do have.”
In Maryland, there is evidence that sturgeon are spawning in Marshyhope Creek, but no juveniles have been caught. “The adults we catch are in spawning condition — bloated females full of loose black eggs, males streaming with milt, more than 100 miles from the nearest ocean,” she says. “But we have yet to catch a baby.”
From left: Ashlee Horne, Ben Staud, Tyler Fowler and Tanner Broadwell of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (Chuck Stence/Maryland Department of Natural Resources photo) This activity was conducted pursuant to NMFS ESA Permit No. 20314-02.
A FISH WITH CHARISMA
Beyond the data and logistics of sturgeon research, Whitmore says, there is the singular experience of working with a fish she describes as charismatic. “We all kind of acknowledge that they’re really special fish, and you can’t really put your finger on it.”
She reminisces on notable moments in the field when she’s been able to observe the animal. One time during field research in the Pamunkey River, she had to stand in a pen of several large sturgeon. “You would never know, looking at the surface of the water, that [there was] a bunch of really powerful, huge fish in there.”
But Whitmore shifted her foot and nudged one. The water erupted. “I mean, it’s just tails thrashing everywhere,” she says. Just as quickly, the frenzy settled back to calm.
During a project years earlier in New Brunswick, Canada, Whitmore caught her very first juvenile sturgeon, which the team took back to shore to surgically insert a tracking device. On the boat ride to shore, she watched the fish swim laps in its holding tank. “It would do a lap around the holding tank and then … when it came around to where I was sitting, it would roll on its back and expose its belly. So, I would just, like a puppy, give a little scratch, and then it would just do another lap.”
But what of the Atlantic sturgeon’s future?
Spells says that the sturgeon population was probably never as fully extirpated as previously thought. “Jim Owen, a liaison for commercial watermen, used to tell me: ‘Albert, there’s sturgeon out there. Watermen catch them. But they’re not going to tell you if you don’t ask.’”
In Maryland, Horne says, “Watermen talk to us — ‘They’ve been here all along. We’ve been catching sturgeon for decades.’”
Spells is hopeful about the convergence of knowledge from teams in the region studying the species. “We share information,” he says. “It’s people up and down the East Coast using the same kind of equipment, sharing data, working together for the same goal and willing to help each other out when they can. That kind of stuff makes a difference.”
Future challenges to the sturgeon population could include increased acidification of the oceans and changing water temperatures due to global climate change. But Spells remains optimistic about the fate of a fish that outlived the dinosaurs.
“They’ve seen climate change in their time,” he says. “They’ve seen a whole lot of stuff. I think there will always be a pocket of sturgeon somewhere. This is a fish that’s built to last.”
MEET THE ATLANTIC STURGEON
- History: Sturgeon fossils date back 120 million years
- Native region: Coastal Canada to coastal Florida
- Size/Weight: Up to 14 feet long and 800 pounds
- Lifespan: 30 to 60 years
- Range of migration: Up to 900 miles
- Annual migration: Estimated to be in the thousands of miles
- Appearance: Leathery skin — bluish-black or olive-brown (on the back) with paler sides and a white belly. Robust body with a long, flat snout featuring four barbels
- Ancient armor: Five rows of exterior bony plates (scutes) along the top and sides
- Sharklike flair: Heterocercal tail resembles a shark’s tail.
Historians note that the Atlantic sturgeon, as a food source, was “the fish that saved Jamestown,” the first permanent English settlement that faced starvation. In a piece of early American lore, colonist Martin Hawkins was fishing in the James River in 1779 and managed to catch an Atlantic sturgeon. While trying to beach the fish, Hawkins took hold by sliding his hands into its gills. But the large fish then jolted away, taking Hawkins onto its back. Thus, he became known as the “sturgeon rider.” Elders of the Pamunkey Indian Reservation tell of a long-passed ancestral tradition challenging young men of the tribe to mount and ride atop a sturgeon as a rite of passage into adulthood. Native American legends claimed with exaggerated license that the rivers were so full of Atlantic sturgeon a person could cross from bank to bank by walking on the sturdy backs of the creatures — not quite true.
Sources: Brandeis University; Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; James River Association; National Park Service; NOAA Fisheries; Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources; Revolutionary War Journal