All of the juvenile sturgeon found in the James River this year were in the 6–11 centimeter range and classified as “age 0,” meaning they were likely just a few weeks old.
“We’re starting to see real momentum to see a species come back, but also a river come back,” said Jamie Brunkow, riverkeeper for the James River Association.
This fall, as of Nov. 12, 153 juvenile sturgeon had been discovered in the James during routine trawling surveys — a staggering increase over last fall’s yield of just two.
Of those, 148 have been caught by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Rice Rivers Center; 40 of them captured on Nov. 5 alone. All of the center’s catches were made between the Benjamin Harrison Bridge near Hopewell and Sturgeon Point, which sits just west of the Fort Pocahontas historical site in Charles City County. The five juveniles turned up by the James River Association were found in mid-October during an education program at Presquile National Wildlife Refuge.
Read the rest of the story in Bay Journal here: https://www.bayjournal.com/article/youn ... ames_river
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