You hear these monster fish before you see them: Atlantic sturgeon leap out of the water and land with a loud splash.
On a recent languid fall day on the river, in one of his last checks of the day in this shoestring recovery effort, Balazik snared a sturgeon in his net and hauls it into the well of his boat.
Working with the skill of a Savile Row tailor, he records the big male’s length, girth, and gender, tags it, then lifts it onto a scale before posing with his trophy for a picture and tossing the 6-foot-long, armor-plated fish back into the river’s silt-flecked waters.
“Their strength is just amazing,’’ said Balazik, who has learned how to work with them rather than against them. “They just have great personalities.’’
Several species of sturgeon range from the Canadian Maritimes and the Great Lakes to Florida.
The once-bountiful Atlantic sturgeon that sustained Native Americans and North America’s first European settlers now may number in the hundreds in the Chesapeake Bay, but no one really knows.
“If sturgeon are to be restored to the Chesapeake Bay, it will happen on the backs of the James River population,’’ said Greg C. Garman, director for the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the leaders of this collaborative effort.
Last month, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the Chesapeake Bay sturgeon was among five East Coast populations proposed for protection. The proposed listing is a desperate attempt to save “a fish of superlatives,’’ Garman said.
The listing would be aimed at protecting the fish’s habitat; their harvest is already banned.
“Sturgeon is the most endangered family of fish,’’ said Brad Sewell, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has pushed for protections. “Globally, they’re all going extinct.’’
