Sturgeon Awe!

While in Wisconsin, I got a chance to see what some nature lovers (thought of you, JB!) may appreciate but may not have gotten a chance to view. I had no idea what a treasure was there in New London!

The activity was sturgeon-spawning. Unless you are John or perhaps his and Wendi's son Isaac, who, at almost two, already knows how to say "cygnet" as well as the names of monkeys I have never heard of, I did not know very much about these fish, except that they were big. I certainly had never seen one. In any case, I have since learned that they indeed are big (some 6 feet long!), prehistoric, and apparently are also quite rare, although the Lake Winnebago waterway system in Wisconsin has the largest concentration of sturgeon (around 58,000!) in the world.

The Wolf/Fox Rivers which run through the towns of New London, where my cousins live, and nearby Shiocton, population 945 (according to the sign we saw!), apparently is the only place in North America where spawning can be seen and which Allison, Ryan, and Brayden took me to see! The fish swim down from the lake system to the rivers, where, when the river water reaches the right temperature (which apparently was just last week), the females lay their eggs on the shallow rocks to be then fertilized. This includes much "dancing" around one another just offshore of the river, and occasional flops out onto the rocks. The fish then return back home.

Here are some photos of our afternoon out there. Although the pics aren't spectacular, it was a really neat thing to see! So there is my naturalist post from this vacation :) Soon it is back to "city" life!