Page 15 - 2018 MAY/JUNE Outdoor Oklahoma

OLAf NELSON/fLiCkr CC-ByNC2.0 JOSH JOHNStON/ODWC

Equipped with snorkel equipment and a dry suit, biologist Brandon
Brown searches for shovelnose sturgeon near downtown Tulsa on a brisk
Shovelnose sturgeon, top view. winter morning.

It’s uncommon for sensitive fish or wildlife to be Living “Pool Cleaner”
found in heavily urbanized areas. But that’s exactly “When you think of sturgeon, you typically think of
where biologist Josh Johnston, Northeast Region fisher- a big fish. But shovelnose sturgeon are really petite. A
ies supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife large shovelnose weighs only 2 or 3 pounds,” Johnston
Conservation, found a rare fish armored with razor-sharp said. “The biggest fish we caught was 32 inches in total
scales and a shovel-shaped snout. length; the tail was about 8 inches long and, at the end,
As motorists were crossing the Arkansas River on was smaller than my pinkie finger.”
Tulsa’s busy Interstate 44 bridge, Johnston and two Shovelnose sturgeon spend much of their lives in
other biologists were nearby in dry suits, catching shov- swift-moving water at the bottom of large rivers.
elnose sturgeon by hand. “These fish are built with a flattened head and a vac-
“It was way too cold to be swimming. The water uum cleaner-type mouth,” Johnston said. “They’re a
temperature was only a degree above freezing. But we lot like a pool cleaner. They cling to the bottom of
knew where four or five shovelnose had congregated,” the river, filter freshwater mussels, snails and some-
Johnston said. times other fish out of the sand, and then spit the
The cold swim and the handful of fish kicked off a sand back out.”
four-year project that aimed to increase knowledge While the project’s first fish were caught by hand,
about Oklahoma’s sturgeon population and what those the technique was only successful when water tem-
fish need to survive in our state. peratures hovered just above freezing and the current
With hopes of writing the first chapter of Oklahoma’s was slow. To catch fish outside of winter’s deep freeze,
shovelnose sturgeon story, Johnston would end up Johnston’s team tried eight other techniques used in
catching and tracking at least 25 of the rare fish. past sturgeon research.

MAY/JUNE 2018 13