Truemors
Stephen Foster never imagined this when he wrote the famous Suwanne River tune. Then again, he'd never actually been to the Suwanne, home of gators, snakes, and leaping sturgeons.
Which is more dangerous to you? Leaping sturgeons, according to officials. They say they don't know why this vaiety of the huge fish, which can weigh up to 200 pounds, leap as they head upstream from the Gulf of Mexico to spawn.
Hmm. Well, many fish leap, and without explaining themselves. I suspect that if they have a reason other than fishyness, the boy sturgeons are simply showing off to impress the girls during spawning season.
After all, they're pretty much left-over prehistoric types. According to Wikipedia, "Sturgeon and related paddlefish first appear in the fossil record approximately 200 million years ago, making them among the most ancient of teleost fish. In that time they have undergone remarkably little morphological change, indicating that their evolution has been exceptionally slow and earning them informal status as living fossils.[1][2] This is explained in part by the long inter-generation time, tolerance for wide ranges of temperature and salinity, lack of predators due to size, and the abundance of prey items in the benthic environment."
In short, the fish version of a knuckle-dragger. But some find the frankly, ugly, fish mysterious and attractive.
Hudson River educator Christopher Letts defined sturgeons like this: "If you've ever had a chanceto look into the eyes of a sturgeon, there are unfathomable depthsthere that take you back millennia; they take you back ages and agesago. And having looked into the eyes of a sturgeon, you can fullyunderstand that these animals swam practically unchanged from the waythey are today when dinosaurs walked the earth."
The Earthwave Society offers videos and education about sturgeons. The huge fish can live 50 to 60 years, which is a lot of spawning and leaping time.
Some varieties of sturgeons, such as the white sturgeon, can grow to almost 2,000 pounds and 20 feet long. There are many options for cooking sturgeon--once you catch it, and land it (or buy it). The Worldwide Gourmet offers recipes for a sturgeon salad recipe with truffle butter and fennel and "pan roated sturgeon with sauteed hedgehog mushrooms served on braised salsify and cucumber, with pomme puree and Pinot Noir reduction."
From prehistoric depths to the gourmet table--that's quite a leap.
When Sharon Touchton says her life was altered by a collision with a fish, it's hard not to chuckle.But then she rattles off her injuries: bruised spleen, fractured cheekbone, broken collarbone, tongue bitten almost in half, fingers nearly severed.
"I was in therapy for about six months," says Touchton, a 51-year-old legal secretary from St. Petersburg. "The medical bills have just been ridiculous."
Last year, Touchton was one of nine people injured on the Suwannee River in the freakiest of freak accidents. She collided with a leaping sturgeon -- a prehistoric fish wrapped in bony scales -- while zipping along on a water scooter.
As the sturgeons begin their annual run up the Suwannee, stateofficials are girding for another year punctuated by bizarre --sometimes violent -- encounters between modern-day humans andCretaceous-era fish.
During the past two years, one person has been killed and 18 othersinjured when they struck or tried to avoid a collision with thejumping, armor-plated creatures that can weigh up to 200 pounds.
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