As the Berrien County government continues working through an emergency request to help dredge a portion of the St. Joseph River near the Tackle Haven docks, one of the factors in play is what to do about the fish. There’s a narrow window between now and mid-May — the start of sturgeon spawning season. When that season begins, dredging is discouraged and you have to get a waiver for the work. Jay Wesley, the Michigan DNR’s Lake Michigan Basin Coordinator, said sturgeon have a local history.
“Historically, it was a high population of sturgeon, and they would migrate from Lake Michigan all the way up to Niles, even further into South Bend to spawn. But now their population is restricted to the area below Berrien Springs Dam, down to Lake Michigan. And there’s a small area in there that they can reproduce, and we think the population is 50 adults or lower.”
Wesley said it’s not unheard of for dredging to happen during the sturgeon spawn moratorium. The May timeframe is a sensitive time for the spawn.
“It’s one of them. It’s where the adults are migrating upstream. So we just want to make sure the dredging activity allows an opportunity or a window throughout the day that those adult sturgeon can move through. So if it’s a daytime dredging event and they’re shut down at night, that allows those fish a chance to move through there and get to the spawning grounds.”
Wesley said he was on the St. Joe River a couple of weeks ago and can confirm the shoaling and shallow waters in the Tackle Haven area. He says the natural sediments collecting there will likely be a problem for recreational boaters if they’re not careful about their depth.
Photo credit: United States Fish and Wildlife Service
