I’ve Become Fascinated With Sturgeon

What is about sturgeon?

Really, they’re a pretty scary fish.  They look like dinosaurs, they can grow to be like 10 feet long, and nobody knows that much about them.  But I’m utterly fascinated with them lately, probably because they’ve been in the news.  Today, they’re saying that you should be wary of eating any that you’ve caught in the Lower Columbia (below the Bonneville), because they’ve tested high for…  *checks notes* polychlorinated biphenyls.  Don’t know what that is, but doesn’t sound like vitamins.

Also, they’re on the endangered list now, so their numbers are dwindling.  They’ve taken some steps to help them bounce back, like limiting how often you can fish for them (to something like 9 days a year or something?) and other measures, but still…  they seem like they’re in trouble.

But yet…  I want to know more about them!  I read something about a “sturgeon ball” they discovered near the Bonneville Dam one time…  it showed up on sonar as a big writing mass, and after diving down, they found thousands of sturgeon huddled in a ball…  just chilling.  Like…  what is that?  Is that common?  Do they do that all the time?  Or was that a convention or something?  A centennial gathering where they share gossip and do some mating or something?  What’s the deal with that?

And if they truly live to be like 100, do they ever get…  smarter?  Like are they hovering near the bottom of the river just thinking about philosophy?  Or are they just stupid as fish, swimming for 80 years and never thinking second about it.

Maybe I need to start fishing for them or something.  Get some firsthand info.  Or maybe I’ll just stay home.

~Jake from 98.7 The Bull