Green Sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) in Kachemak Bay

Observation by Ted Otis:

Documented observations of sturgeon in Alaska waters are very rare (see Colway and Stevenson 2007, Northwestern Naturalist, 88(3): 188-192). What appears to be a green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris; identified via photographs) was caught and released by a commercial salmon seine vessel (F/V Laissez Faire) on July 6, 2020 at 11:06 am, approximately 0.5 miles south/southwest of the mouth of China Poot Bay in Kachemak Bay (approx. 59.569908° N, by -151.347235° W). The fish was 42 inches long and weighed approximately 14 pounds. No samples or tissues were collected and the fish was released alive at the same location after the crew took a half dozen pictures.

Andrés López, Curator of Fishes at the UAF Museum of the North writes:

I created a record in our collection database. The record can be found here: https://arctos.database.museum/guid/UAMObs:Fish:14

Prompted by this observation and looking into other sources of fish observations, we learned that sturgeon are regularly encountered in fisheries activities along the Gulf of Alaska coast. The number of observations per year is low but sustained from year to year.

Comments from LEO Editors:

This observation has been forwarded to the Department of Environmental Science at Alaska Pacific University.

LEO has received only one other post about a sturgeon caught in Alaska. In July of 2019, commercial fishers in the Yukon caught what could have been either a green sturgeon or an Asian Sakhalin sturgeon. We reached out to Erin Larson, an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Alaska Pacific University. In response, Erin wrote:

I've attached a couple of publications about green sturgeon, including one specifically about reports of them in Alaska. The northern range of green sturgeon isn't super well-defined, but they have been spotted in the Bering Sea and the Kuskokwim estuary previously.

In one of the papers that both Ted and Erin referenced, "Confirmed Records of Two Green Sturgeon from the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska," green sturgeon have been documented in the waters of Southeast Alaska and northern British Columbia, but at the time of that publication in 2007, there have been only three reliable reports of green sturgeon in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, and two anecdotal reports from the Copper River and Unalaska areas.