ABOVE: This juvenile sturgeon has been implanted with a microchip that will help researchers identify the fish if it swims back to the river it grew up in.
TOLEDO ZOO & AQUARIUM
One warm Saturday morning in October, people streamed down a hill to a boat launch on the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio, to take part in a historic event. Adorned with “I love sturgeon” stickers courtesy of the Toledo Zoo & Aquarium, some gathered under a tent on one side of an adjacent parking lot to hear local dignitaries commemorate the occasion, while others visited a line of educational booths. But most took their place in a queue, dozens of people long, that curved between the two. This was the line to sponsor a fish.
The piscine stars of the event, young lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) measuring about seven inches long, were part of an effort to reintroduce a ...
