Gulf sturgeon recently made the news when University of Southern Mississippi (USM) Researcher Mike Andres, Ph.D., and his team detected a 5-foot-long, 17-year-old fish near Jackson, Mississippi, using acoustic telemetry (a method that uses transmitters, receivers and soundwaves to track fish movements). Sturgeon are anadromous, which means they spend much of the year in the ocean, then migrate upstream to spawn. This sturgeon, originally tagged in 2017 in the Mississippi River, swam upstream almost 200 miles from the Mississippi Sound past the Jackson Waterworks dam. Ordinarily the dam blocks sturgeon migration, and this was the first official sturgeon observation in the area since 1996.
The sturgeon migration illustrates the importance of viewing different parts of an environment as a cohesive system of interrelated processes and features. In this case, the system is the watershed connecting inland parts of Mississippi with the Mississippi Sound by way of the Pearl River and its tributaries.
Upper-elementary-aged students explore sturgeon behavior in the watershed through a series of activities led by USM’s Marine Education Center (MEC). Some activities take place when MEC educators travel to their school. First, a simple demonstration illustrates how water flow connects land draining to a single water body. In the “Surging Sturgeon” board game, students draw cards describing different experiences a sturgeon might have that would either advance or impede their migration through the watershed – first one to go all the way across the board and come all the way back completes a full migration and wins the game!
Finally, students explore actual migration of individual fish using acoustic telemetry data collected when a tagged animal swims near an acoustic sensor placed by scientists near either the barrier island feeding grounds or the upstream spawning grounds.
Students travel to the MEC a day or two later. Most of this day is devoted to an educational cruise along Davis Bayou, collecting data and considering the habitats available to different organisms, including Gulf sturgeon. The final activity is “Stewardship Jeopardy.” Prompts on the standard game show template encourage students to reflect on what they have learned.
From these activities, children learn about Gulf sturgeon and their migration. They begin to recognize that human activities upstream can affect fish in the ocean and become aware they can become active stewards of the environment.
In the past 10 years or so, the USM MEC has built a network of watershed education activities to teach K-12 students and their teachers how activity in one part of the watershed affects the rest of the watershed. The MEC watershed education program is the result of leveraging resources from several funding agencies. “Sturgeon in the Watershed” activities were created with funding from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality RESTORE program. Long-term, ongoing support from Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium allows the MEC to incorporate novel lessons and up-to-date research into its existing programs to reach much larger audiences.
More information about the Gulf sturgeon
More information about the USM Marine Education Center
Meet the author
Jessie Kastler, Ph.D.
Director, Marine Education Center
Jessie Kastler leverages Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant funds and grants from other agencies to produce and implement education programs at The University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research... Read more
Phone: 228-818-8090
Email: [email protected]