Officials in Iowa were taken aback after a surprising and unlikely find in the Des Moines River.
As the Des Moines Register reported, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources discovered two pallid sturgeons in the river within a week's time last spring.
The fish, native to central regions of the United States, ranks among the rarest fish in North America. With only a few populations remaining, they've been classified as federally endangered since 1990.
Sturgeon are among the most widely traded fish globally, with their eggs used for caviar. Overfishing for this delicacy, combined with habitat loss, has specifically endangered the pallid sturgeon and made sightings uncommon.
"The pallid sturgeon wasn't even on our radar because it wasn't one that we expected to actually find in the Des Moines River," revealed Mark Flammang, a DNR fisheries biologist, per the Register.
The find was part of an annual spring sturgeon sampling effort that's been going on since at least 2014. Flammang said both of the likely decades-old fish were healthy and doing well. Sturgeon can live to 150 years, so the duo could have many years left in the waters.
Making the find even more notable was where it occurred and the nature of the fish. Pallid sturgeons are more common in the Missouri River and not in the waters of the Mississippi north of St. Louis, per Flammang.
These two were also not reproduced from a hatchery, which is contributing to the efforts to resuscitate their population.
"Not only did we catch a fish we weren't expecting that's federally endangered, but also that was produced naturally, so it's kind of a trifecta," Flammang said, per the Register. "You can't get rarer than that."
The DNR collected tissue samples from the sturgeon and released them back into the river, hoping they would serve as an example to fishermen.
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"It's imperative that anglers know that they must release these fish back in the river immediately," Flammang concluded.
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