Watch Swimming Dinosaurs

Sturgeons are the aquatic world's living dinosaurs. Well, not really dinosaurs--they're fish, after all, not reptiles. But they remain little changed since the time of dinosaurs. A new video now permits many of us to see these ancient creatures in the wild--an increasingly unusual event.

Known primarily as the source of true caviar, these boneless fishes are unusual for a number of reasons--many outlined in a cover story I recently did for Science News. Throughout most of their range, sturgeon species are poorly protected, and as such, are declining to the point of near extinction--in most cases, the result of overfishing.

One notable exception: Wisconsin's lake stugeon.

I started out my March 4 story, last year, describing how sturgeon-conservation managers milked eggs and sperm from fish that were congregating in Wisconsin's Wolf River to spawn. Then, the researchers stirred the newly collected reproductive cells together in buckets and waited for the eggs to fertilize. Later, these would be trucked to hatcheries and incubated through at least babyhood.

To write the story, I spoke with individuals who had taken part in the exercise and had asked them to walk me through the fish catch-and-release event, step-by-step. But I didn't get a chance to see it myself. And although I saw still shots of the fish, I never witnessed their congregating behaviors.

Now you can--and I just have--by watching a short, 4 minute video posted yesterday by Michael Sears, a staff photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

One onlooker in the film describes these sturgeons as the ugliest of fish. I disagree. They've a primative beauty that I find arresting. And Sear's video gives us a chance to witness the primal drive to survive by the one North American sturgeon species (of seven) that's not fairly imminently facing the prospect of extinction.

Before long, we might all get to see the lake sturegon mating behaviors in even greater detail. According to the video, a crew of cinematographers was also present on the Wolf River while Sears was shooting his video. Those others? An IMAX crew getting shots for a film due out in 2008.