If you see Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks crews heading up and down the rivers a lot lately, it’s because they are intensively monitoring five pallid sturgeon, including three hatchery-origin males and a wild male and female pair that spawned together in the Tongue River in 2023. Fisheries crews use radio telemetry to track the fish. As of yesterday the female was still carrying her eggs, according to fish biologist Caleb Bollman. FWP will attempt to catch this female again to see if she spawns.
The endangered sturgeon must swim far enough upstream to spawn so that the larvae can drift far enough downstream to become viable. No natural recruitment of pallid sturgeon has been documented for at least 30 years. Completion of the bypass channel at Intake Diversion Dam has allowed pallid sturgeon to migrate upstream more easily, and FWP is tracking whether this will help sturgeon to spawn successfully in the wild.
Photo: Fisheries technician Sarah Sprague holds Code 402 a week ago. Using radio telemetry, FWP tracks pallids migrating upstream to spawn. The females are checked for eggs using ultrasound, then captured later to see if they have deposited eggs.
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