Scientists from the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute and 30 students (ninth-12 graders) from Ivy Academy will release more than 600 juvenile Lake Sturgeon into the Tennessee River by Coolidge Park on Friday beginning at 11 a.m.
The Lake Sturgeon has existed since the Cretaceous Period and has remained largely unchanged, earning it the distinction as a “living fossil,” officials said.
By the 1970s, this river giant — which can reach lengths of nine feet and weigh in excess of 300 pounds — had all but disappeared from the Tennessee River due to poor water quality, damming and over-fishing.
Since the formation of the Lake Sturgeon Working Group in 1998, the Tennessee Aquarium, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency have released more than 330,000 Lake Sturgeon into the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Many of these releases, like Friday’s, are made open to the community. The students who participate in the upcoming release may be long outlived by these fish, which can live for 150 years.
The Lake Sturgeon is listed as an endangered species in Tennessee.