VCU's Rice Rivers Center studies Atlantic sturgeon in the James River. (Courtesy T-Mobile)
Matt Balazik’s long, strange journey with Atlantic sturgeon began when he joined Virginia Commonwealth University in 2001 to conduct age and growth studies on a fish considered a living fossil. Three years later, there was a breakthrough: A juvenile Atlantic sturgeon was found in the river for the first time in several decades. Balazik has been tracking them from VCU’s Rice Rivers Center in Charles City County ever since.
The good news is that the fish has returned in strong numbers to popular spawning spots near Osborne Landing. It was once thought that sturgeon — a major food source for generations of Native Americans — had suffered from so much overfishing and habitat destruction during the late 19th century that there was no longer a viable population in the James River.
The bad news, Balazik says, is that only one crop of fish born in the James since 2010 seems to have successfully developed past the larval stage. “Since we started to do this work back in 2010, we have captured 602 juveniles born in the James River; 598 of those were born in 2018,” he says.
The unhappy conclusion: Despite the spectacular spawning that occurs in Richmond each September, with energetic males breaching the water as far upriver as 14th Street, only four other juvenile specimens have been captured since 2010 that weren’t born in the fall of 2018.
“We don’t know what’s wrong,” Balazik says. “I don’t think it’s the eggs developing that’s the issue. Some of us think there may be predation — we all know blue catfish are an issue.”
But there’s no smoking gun for why those born in 2018 were so successful, or why other spawns have been unsuccessful.
“We’ve used techniques that work in other rivers; we’ve brought in people who have had great success in other rivers with a smaller adult population,” he says. “We don’t have an answer. It’s all theories right now.”
For the past four years, though, Balazik and his team have worked with Dominion Energy to eliminate a potential variable. The VCU team monitors the arrival of adult female sturgeon tagged with a chip. When spawning is about to start, they alert Dominion, which then shuts off its water pumps near Osborne Landing until the spawning period is over.
“The chance that the pumps will [suck up sturgeon eggs] is low,” Balazik says, “but just to be sure, they’ll turn the pumps off during spawning season. They remain off for a short period afterward, too, to avoid sucking up any larvae.”
While Balazik and his crew continue to search for answers, there is more good news on the horizon. In general, the Atlantic sturgeon — which spends most of its adult life in the ocean — returns to the place it was born to spawn. “In 2028,” Balazik says, “we’re going to see the first males from that [2018] cohort coming back.”
