Hopefully it's the smaller sizes. Fish (unlike most other species) continue to grow their entire lives. So the really large ones are usually very old.
Overfishing too many of the old ones and not letting enough of the young ones get older will make it so that we never see beauties like this one much.
Goliath groupers almost disappeared due to overfishing.
Sturgeon have odd life cycles. They don't reach sexual maturity until they're 15-20 years, as a result, you can take them between 38 and 54 inches. The larger ones are considered too valuable for breeding to be taken. The minimum and maximum size varies by location, and the areas you can fish for them are very limited.
Weirdly was on the menu at Jake's Crawfish restaurant in Portland Oregon this week. Being from Michigan I couldn't imagine eating one just out of respect for it's endangered nature in MI at least.
They have a limited fishing season where I grew up. Most people don’t bother to keep them, because they are more of a sport fish. However, they are an extremely fatty fish, and great smoked.
You need to be very careful while processing sturgeon. Their spinal cord contains a neurotoxin that can make you very very sick.
I held off forever for a sale, finally one happened for $3 off, decided I'd waited long enough and bought it.
It's the main/only game I play right now, months later.
Just buy it.
As a child in WA state growing up I had many different occasions to try Sturgeon. Mostly smoked. And it was absolutely delicious. But then again, I can't recall a smoked meat I haven't loved.
I usually just drop mine after I catch them. Same with salmon. I already have 99 cooking and I have no reason to save them for food when I have 20k+ baskets of strawberries. If you need cooking xp obviously I'd say go for it. Still no reason to eat them unless I guess you are low on hitpoints. Other than that they're not valuable in the game.
I left Michigan and now reside in Idaho where these dinosaurs are heavily protected. Like, get in the water to retrieve the fish and treat em like your first born protected
Freaky as hell seeing their long 'spines' lurking just above the surface of the water at dusk or night. First time I ever saw one it evoked some kind of primal lake monster terror.
Fun fact a sturgeon grows approx 1 foot in length for every ten years of their life. Not an exact science but it’s safe to assume said fish is about 70 years old.
No, on the last day of the year they grow a foot. Then they have to wait another year to grow again. If they forget to grow in the last day they miss the opportunity until the next year. It's not constant.
No, another fish gets the spare foot if another forgets. It's entirely possible that this 7 foot specimen is only a year old, but was very lucky that 6 other fish got too drunk and slept through the growing day, and this guy got to grow very rapidly, that's likely why its on shore sleeping off its growing spurt.
56-119 years old. https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/dnr/Documents/Fisheries/TCU/StClair_weight_estimation.pdf?rev=c4514b6523014724b3be84228af3f374
Glad to see these posts, rabbit holes can be edifying and now I know a little about Sturgeon. Enough to win a game show maybe with one of those obscure questions.
They absolutely can live 150+ years. It's not so common these days given human interference, but sturgeon live extremely long lives. They've caught lake sturgeon on the Great Lakes in the modern era up to 8' long and 300 lbs.
They can grow in excess of 10 feet, but that doesn't happen in the US anymore given the level of disruption by humans. They catch specimens that big up in Canada still. [Here's an albino behomoth that clocked in at 11' and roughly 1,000 lbs.](https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/rare-albino-sturgeon-possibly-the-worlds-biggest-caught-on-fraser-river/amp/)
That is a white sturgeon however, which is a different species. This is a Lake Sturgeon.
White Sturgeon get absolutely massive. Lake sturgeon max out around the size of this one, maybe a bit larger.
Say that as one brushes up against you in the deep part of a small murky river as you're swimming across with fishing gear. Never before and never since have I seen a man get out of head high water so quickly.
Must be a female then, most sturgeon males only live around 50-60 years while the females can live to 150.
What's also super fascinating is that these animals have been around since the cretaceous \~200 million years). They are so old that they predate modern scales that most fish have!
It is biological. The thing is you don't need that many males for a population to remain healthy. Obviously you don't want to few either. That said females have a much more profound impact on species survivability especially in fish (excluding those that are semelparous, or die after mating like salmon). It's a much larger investment of energy to produce eggs than it is sperm. Therefore it is evolutionarily advantageous to have females live longer and produce more eggs in that time frame. Additionally, size has a direct correlation with the total egg production and its not a linear graph. Larger females can produce many times more eggs than females half their size. So again, size correlates with age, and this case also correlates with egg production and therefore species survivability.
Source, I am doing a PhD in environmental engineering focused on aquaculture and fish in general.
Wait, so fish continually grow new eggs throughout their life?
I had always assumed all species functioned like mammals in that they were born with all of their eggs, and they just released a given amount at a time. Never really thought about it, but that was my baseline assumption as I never had cause you question it
Yep! Fish endocrinology does not work like our. Not only can most fish produce eggs their entire lives, depending on depending on the species they can actually switch sexes when necessary. One of my favorite examples of that is the blue headed wrass. When you find them out in the Caribbean there's usually 1 'terminal male' surrounded by a group of females. What happens is the largest fish becomes male while the rest remain female.If the male gets eaten or dies the next largest fish becomes male.
Back to the egg production it's interesting because some fish have internal fertilization (Oviparity) and others have external fertilization of the eggs (Ovuliparity). There are even a select few fish that give birth to live young!
Edit: Grammer
Good question, no they cannot. Only a few a few families of fish can change sex, either sequentially, or serially. (Meaning they go from one to another and stay that way, or they can go back and forth as needed.)
It’s a shame the sturgeon died, but it likely died from old age. Sturgeon never stop growing, but grow slowly. To get that long, that fish was likely 100+ years old.
Conservationists are working to revive the sturgeon population in Lake Erie and several decades from now there could be a lot more r/AbsoluteUnits like this in the lake and the Detroit River!
I feel like that's a profession where, at least versus averages, people may be a bit smaller so their hands can fit and have the dexterity needed inside of people during surgery.
I swim in it all the time at the Cedar Point beach. Bruh, you're stuck in the 1970's. Since then Erie is super clean. It does have algae bloom issues every 10 or so years which isn't uncommon.
Metro Beach on Lake St. Clair (which is part of the great lakes system but not a great lake) does have issues though.
Cripes, I've been swimming out of Port Dover down to Turkey Point since the 1970s (nothing wrong with me, twitch....gurgle....).
Erie is in great shape these days, though the zebra mussels are pretty awful in places.
Walleye capital of the entire country. Why is it nasty? Pollution? I could give a $hit about swimming in it. I mean who would want to swim there? That's what pools are for.
45 years ago, lake Erie was awful. The Cuyahoga river caught on fire because there was so much pollution. Cleveland really didn't give a shit about what they dumped in it. Detroit wasn't a whole lot better either but not dumping nearly the mix and amounts of Cleveland. These river fires were the catalyst to get the EPA running..
Today, lake Erie is one of the cleanest lakes in the world. It's safe. That person is either from then and rightfully doesn't trust the water or someones filling their head with nonsense while not recognizing the extensive cleanup efforts since then .
I grew up on Lake Erie and never got to se a big Sturgeon. I caught a 1footer once and another time when i was scooping for minos I cuaght a baby one in the net. Couldn't have been more than 1-2inches. Caught a LOT of Sheephead tho LOL! The teeth on those things are FREAKY! Looks like a fish with a human mouth!
I kayak fish and these enormous dinosaurs breach uncomfortably close to me all the time.
Are sturgeons edible or worth cooking and eating? Any value to them?
They are protected most places. Catch and release only and you can't take them out of the water.
In my region, there is an extremely specific size range that can be kept.
Hopefully it's the smaller sizes. Fish (unlike most other species) continue to grow their entire lives. So the really large ones are usually very old. Overfishing too many of the old ones and not letting enough of the young ones get older will make it so that we never see beauties like this one much. Goliath groupers almost disappeared due to overfishing.
Sturgeon have odd life cycles. They don't reach sexual maturity until they're 15-20 years, as a result, you can take them between 38 and 54 inches. The larger ones are considered too valuable for breeding to be taken. The minimum and maximum size varies by location, and the areas you can fish for them are very limited.
>They don't reach sexual maturity until they're 15-20 years They're like me fr
Name checks out.
Hence specific size ranges that can be kept
Indigenous Canadians can hunt anything, any time
They have far fewer restrictions than others, but your statement is false.
Ok
Weirdly was on the menu at Jake's Crawfish restaurant in Portland Oregon this week. Being from Michigan I couldn't imagine eating one just out of respect for it's endangered nature in MI at least.
Don't worry, it was most likely farmed sturgeon, not wild caught! They are raised for caviar too.
Apparently they can take themselves out though.
Are they dangerous to humans ?
Only when they breach and sink your boat by landing on it and you
Well, someone broke the law... Punish the law-breaker!
Yeah, punish the water for lowering!
They have a limited fishing season where I grew up. Most people don’t bother to keep them, because they are more of a sport fish. However, they are an extremely fatty fish, and great smoked. You need to be very careful while processing sturgeon. Their spinal cord contains a neurotoxin that can make you very very sick.
Hold up! I recently watch an Iron Chef that featured sturgeon and one team used the notochord as a main ingredient in a dish.
That was so weird.
Their eggs are prized for caviar.
I, too, play stardew valley.
It’s actually on my steam wish list but I haven’t played yet. My info comes from a TIL post from years ago about the Russian exports.
Stardew will suck you in, man.
I held off forever for a sale, finally one happened for $3 off, decided I'd waited long enough and bought it. It's the main/only game I play right now, months later. Just buy it.
There is a spear fishing season for them on a lake here in Wisconsin. Up to 50,000 of them slinking around in lake Winnebago.
Winnebago? My uncle Denny used to have one of those.
Winnebago? I think you mean Wannabango
Rabbit, put your game face on
Illegal to keep or harass where I live.
Fuck, I was gonna go down to the lake and catcall the fish. Guess I'll change my plans.
I catfished a fish once , never again
As a child in WA state growing up I had many different occasions to try Sturgeon. Mostly smoked. And it was absolutely delicious. But then again, I can't recall a smoked meat I haven't loved.
Your mom likes to smoke my meat
They are a protected species. I think one day a year fishing is allowed, during the sturgeon festival here in MI
I usually just drop mine after I catch them. Same with salmon. I already have 99 cooking and I have no reason to save them for food when I have 20k+ baskets of strawberries. If you need cooking xp obviously I'd say go for it. Still no reason to eat them unless I guess you are low on hitpoints. Other than that they're not valuable in the game.
Which game are you referencing?
Runescape, old school Runescape that is haha!
They are delicious. In medieval Britain, it was illegal for anyone except for the king to eat sturgeon.
Edible and high quality meat. IIRC the Joy of Cooking compares it to veal.
Most places you can't keep them
I left Michigan and now reside in Idaho where these dinosaurs are heavily protected. Like, get in the water to retrieve the fish and treat em like your first born protected
They’re one of my favorite fish
Caviar
Only for their unborn fetuses
I heard they don't taste very good so most people throw them back anyway.
No. They are slimy and taste funky.
HOW DO YOU KAYAK A FISH???
you drop it big boat, kayak on crane on boat, bait floating underneath, fish comes up to eat bait, release kayak boum, fish kayaked
Very carefully
Freaky as hell seeing their long 'spines' lurking just above the surface of the water at dusk or night. First time I ever saw one it evoked some kind of primal lake monster terror.
Fun fact a sturgeon grows approx 1 foot in length for every ten years of their life. Not an exact science but it’s safe to assume said fish is about 70 years old.
So do they constantly grow?
No, on the last day of the year they grow a foot. Then they have to wait another year to grow again. If they forget to grow in the last day they miss the opportunity until the next year. It's not constant.
You must be a fish doctor. Very wise in the ways of fish indeed, maybe even a specialist, like a Fish Sturgeon.
Sturgeon Surgeon is the technical term.
You rang?
SAVE THIS POOR FISHIES LIFE!! Please, do some gill to gill or something.
r/beetlejuicing
I hereby nominate you as sturgeon surgeon general.
Is that as revered as Bird Lawyer?
Haha 
This is the best profession. Even better than a whale biologist. I'm changing my major to fish doctor!
That would be a ichthy job
The wording of this comment feels like a monty python sketch
Mmm, yes, very wise
If anyone would know about the water it’s you, Old Greg.
IM OLD GREGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lmaooo thanks for this you made my day
This is me when I was 5 and anxious that I would not grow older if we didn't celebrate my birthday with a cake.
Are you a Sim?
They asked if it grows constantly, not consistently. If anybody cares...
One fish, two fish, old fish, grew fish
This is way funnier than it should have been
If they forget to grow one year, do they get to grow double the next year?
No, another fish gets the spare foot if another forgets. It's entirely possible that this 7 foot specimen is only a year old, but was very lucky that 6 other fish got too drunk and slept through the growing day, and this guy got to grow very rapidly, that's likely why its on shore sleeping off its growing spurt.
The six fish from the Navy taking full advantage of their shore leave. Meanwhile, this guy...
Definitely a Chadfish.
Your profile picture couldn't be a more perfect representation of your comment lmao
The person you're responding to username checks out.
All fish constantly grow, however the growth rate slows as the fish ages. There's a formula to calculate this called the von bertalanfy curve.
Up to 20 feet - 200 years.
This is the fish that sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald!
Hey, that's not the lake they call gichagumi!
Fish that big probably just walked over
I don't think they go that long since they have no feet
56-119 years old. https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/dnr/Documents/Fisheries/TCU/StClair_weight_estimation.pdf?rev=c4514b6523014724b3be84228af3f374 Glad to see these posts, rabbit holes can be edifying and now I know a little about Sturgeon. Enough to win a game show maybe with one of those obscure questions.
Someone told me it was around 30 but it seems far too big for that. Some guy my father knows took this photo. Not exactly an expert in marine biology.
Pretty big honkin fish though. Same site that was on said they can live 150 years, which seems a bit..
They absolutely can live 150+ years. It's not so common these days given human interference, but sturgeon live extremely long lives. They've caught lake sturgeon on the Great Lakes in the modern era up to 8' long and 300 lbs. They can grow in excess of 10 feet, but that doesn't happen in the US anymore given the level of disruption by humans. They catch specimens that big up in Canada still. [Here's an albino behomoth that clocked in at 11' and roughly 1,000 lbs.](https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/rare-albino-sturgeon-possibly-the-worlds-biggest-caught-on-fraser-river/amp/)
Nice that they let the albino go, would be a shame to kill it imo.
And the sturgeon in the west get considerably larger. Up to 20 feet and 2000 lbs.
That is a white sturgeon however, which is a different species. This is a Lake Sturgeon. White Sturgeon get absolutely massive. Lake sturgeon max out around the size of this one, maybe a bit larger.
They are basically dinosaurs.
Looking at that chart it would be 102-153 years old. 7 feet according to OP, not 70 inches!
Probably older too. 7ft = 84in which isn't even on the table.
This shit right here? Why I’m afraid of the water. Plus I can’t swim.
Nothing to be afraid of with these gentle giants.
Say that as one brushes up against you in the deep part of a small murky river as you're swimming across with fishing gear. Never before and never since have I seen a man get out of head high water so quickly.
Lizard brain kicking in.
I've actually swam in lake Erie, dont know if I'll be doing that again
More like Lake Eerie amirite?
Who water-skis on lake Eerie. Wait, no... where does Dracula like to water-ski?
Erie is the least of the Great Lakes anyway.
Not by volume bitch, when the water wars begin your big shallow ponds will be begging for the greatest of lakes water
It's actually the smallest by volume, but I can attest that it's also the shittiest. I grew up within bike ride distance from it.
more fish are caught in lake erie than all the other great lakes combined
Sturgeon general warning!
Washing up on beaches is hazardous for your health!
lake eerie
It’s the sturgeon general’s general sturgeon warning.
Must be a female then, most sturgeon males only live around 50-60 years while the females can live to 150. What's also super fascinating is that these animals have been around since the cretaceous \~200 million years). They are so old that they predate modern scales that most fish have!
Is that lifespan difference something biological, or do the males fight to the death or something weird over time?
It is biological. The thing is you don't need that many males for a population to remain healthy. Obviously you don't want to few either. That said females have a much more profound impact on species survivability especially in fish (excluding those that are semelparous, or die after mating like salmon). It's a much larger investment of energy to produce eggs than it is sperm. Therefore it is evolutionarily advantageous to have females live longer and produce more eggs in that time frame. Additionally, size has a direct correlation with the total egg production and its not a linear graph. Larger females can produce many times more eggs than females half their size. So again, size correlates with age, and this case also correlates with egg production and therefore species survivability. Source, I am doing a PhD in environmental engineering focused on aquaculture and fish in general.
I now have you tagged as 'PhD in Fish Facts'. Thank you for your service.
Your welcome! Feel free to message me any time about environmental engineering or fish, or blacksmithing. (The last one was my job through undergrad).
Wait, so fish continually grow new eggs throughout their life? I had always assumed all species functioned like mammals in that they were born with all of their eggs, and they just released a given amount at a time. Never really thought about it, but that was my baseline assumption as I never had cause you question it
Yep! Fish endocrinology does not work like our. Not only can most fish produce eggs their entire lives, depending on depending on the species they can actually switch sexes when necessary. One of my favorite examples of that is the blue headed wrass. When you find them out in the Caribbean there's usually 1 'terminal male' surrounded by a group of females. What happens is the largest fish becomes male while the rest remain female.If the male gets eaten or dies the next largest fish becomes male. Back to the egg production it's interesting because some fish have internal fertilization (Oviparity) and others have external fertilization of the eggs (Ovuliparity). There are even a select few fish that give birth to live young! Edit: Grammer
Super cool! Learned a lot from your comment, and appreciate it!
Glad to help!
Can sturgeons change their sex? Like barramundi for example?
Good question, no they cannot. Only a few a few families of fish can change sex, either sequentially, or serially. (Meaning they go from one to another and stay that way, or they can go back and forth as needed.)
It’s a shame the sturgeon died, but it likely died from old age. Sturgeon never stop growing, but grow slowly. To get that long, that fish was likely 100+ years old. Conservationists are working to revive the sturgeon population in Lake Erie and several decades from now there could be a lot more r/AbsoluteUnits like this in the lake and the Detroit River!
This 7 foot dead fish would be perfect for the Detroit Pistons
Pistons will have to wait, he’s got a try out with the lions first.
Don’t worry if he does well in his first season the Lakers will snap him up
Lake Sturgeons should probably play for the Lakers anyway
I read surgeon and I was quite disappointed when I did not see a unit of a man in a scrubs.
Wrong sub. Haha (r/absoluteunit)
I'd be down to see that if any absolute unit surgeons out there are on reddit rn.
I feel like that's a profession where, at least versus averages, people may be a bit smaller so their hands can fit and have the dexterity needed inside of people during surgery.
That is… eerie.
Needs banana for scale.
I caught this at Saint Dennis the other day.
"You, sir, are a fish."
Top 5 games all time.
is there a purple star award?
What city is this in?
Washed up near Buffalo
Baldur's Gate. Rumor has it's recently been on quite the splurge.
Is this Sturgeon also seeking Scottish independence?
Where at exactly on Lake Erie? Buffalo area?
Yep, Wendt Beach
That’s crazy. I ride my jet ski over those exact beach waters and had no idea fish that big were in waters that shallow right beneath me lol
*Please don't say Buffalo area.*
Where exactly on Lake Erie did this wash up on?
Looks like the beach.
Gee, thanks Einstein
You asked, he delivered
The hero he needed, not the one he wanted.
Wendt Beach
was it just me who read it as surgeon?
Wrap it, put it on your horse and brick it to the train station.
Well my father's from Cleveland
The Sturgeon General
I read 7 foot Surgeon at first and was really confused
Where does Dracula like to water ski?
Blood Lake?
Sturgeon must condemn!!! (srsly it's nice as a Scot to see a post with "Sturgeon" in the title that isn't full of political bleating)
He was probably running late to the OR?? I'll see myself out.
Pollution.
Lake Erie is so nasty not even the sturgeon want to live there anymore.
Erie is one of the best freshwater sports fishing lakes in the world.
And yet you couldn’t pay me to swim in it lol
I swim in it all the time at the Cedar Point beach. Bruh, you're stuck in the 1970's. Since then Erie is super clean. It does have algae bloom issues every 10 or so years which isn't uncommon. Metro Beach on Lake St. Clair (which is part of the great lakes system but not a great lake) does have issues though.
Cripes, I've been swimming out of Port Dover down to Turkey Point since the 1970s (nothing wrong with me, twitch....gurgle....). Erie is in great shape these days, though the zebra mussels are pretty awful in places.
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Ooof. Don’t piss of the fishermen of Reddit!
Walleye capital of the entire country. Why is it nasty? Pollution? I could give a $hit about swimming in it. I mean who would want to swim there? That's what pools are for.
45 years ago, lake Erie was awful. The Cuyahoga river caught on fire because there was so much pollution. Cleveland really didn't give a shit about what they dumped in it. Detroit wasn't a whole lot better either but not dumping nearly the mix and amounts of Cleveland. These river fires were the catalyst to get the EPA running.. Today, lake Erie is one of the cleanest lakes in the world. It's safe. That person is either from then and rightfully doesn't trust the water or someones filling their head with nonsense while not recognizing the extensive cleanup efforts since then .
It didn't wash up. I caught it. I just left it there while I went to find my friends.
Needs a banana for scale
big fish
A true modern day dinosaur!
Dinner?
French freshwater shark
Put it on yer wall!
I guess this time farther below Lake Ontarion didn't take what Lake Erie could send her.
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Sad. Wish it could've stayed alive
It looks surprised and a little sad to be there.
That’s about one Shaq long
No shit. Is that edgewater beach?
Fucking dinosaur fish
The vtuber juniper actias would die if she heard of this
Wow
Wow
I stumbled across footage of this guy https://youtube.com/shorts/dKMcu5VOPcE?feature=share
I grew up on Lake Erie and never got to se a big Sturgeon. I caught a 1footer once and another time when i was scooping for minos I cuaght a baby one in the net. Couldn't have been more than 1-2inches. Caught a LOT of Sheephead tho LOL! The teeth on those things are FREAKY! Looks like a fish with a human mouth!
Sorry it escaped from my aquarium 🥺
and this may have been when it was touched for the very first time
Wonder if it can perform surgery
Quick, call the sturgeon general!
Damn he doing all right?