Monday November 3, 2025
Lake County News —
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — How did a white sturgeon end up in Clear Lake?
Scientists are still working to answer that question about the sturgeon, discovered in September.
The white sturgeon is the largest freshwater fish in North America, but its range doesn’t include Clear Lake.
So when the big fish was found dead, washed up on a beach in Buckingham, in mid-September, it kicked off an investigation involving tribal and government scientists.
Sarah Ryan, environmental director for the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians, said her agency got tissue samples of the sturgeon which they sent off for analysis of microcystins and mercury.
She said Robinson Rancheria is reviewing the sturgeon’s ear bones to determine whether it started in Clear Lake or not, which is possible because there is geologic imprinting on their ear bones.
Ryan said there also is a fin study being done by wildlife scientists to determine whether the fish was in salt water or not.
“We also got reports of other sturgeon sightings but never got enough details to follow up,” Ryan said.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors received an update from the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee on a fish die-off that occurred at the start of September, first reported about a week before the sturgeon was found.
Luis Santana, chair of the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee and fish and wildlife director of Robinson Rancheria’s Danoxa Fish and Wildlife Department, led the presentation about the die-off and also updated the board on the investigation into the sturgeon’s discovery.
Santana acknowledged how the topic of the sturgeon “was going crazy” on social media.
Some commenters on social media claimed the fish wasn’t real, and that the discovery was a hoax.
“Yes, it was there. It was 100% real,” Santana said.
“I took the head and the pictorial fins for further analysis, and we should know more about it, hopefully in the next couple weeks,” he explained.
Santana said the investigation is trying to identify the habitat where the sturgeon was at for its entire life.
He said that, so far, he’s thinking that someone caught it in the bay and transported it to Lake County to let it live out the rest of its life in Clear Lake.
The sturgeon was a female, and measured 7 feet, 7 inches in length, Santana said.
Santana said the low levels of dissolved oxygen in early September affected all of Clear Lake, was located throughout the water column and impacted numerous species of fish.
Likewise, so far, he believes the low-oxygen event also caused the sturgeon to die.
Noting that people do “crazy and illegal things all the time,” Santana said he doesn’t recommend moving any fish from one body of water to another, but he believes that’s what happened with the sturgeon.
The white sturgeon is a candidate for listing under the California Endangered Species Act, is catch-and-release only in the state and can’t be kept in a live well. California Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations say sturgeons of the size of the one found in Clear Lake are not to be removed from the water at all.
As a result, moving such a fish from its natural habitat could result in thousands of dollars in legal fines and jail time, according to state regulations.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife previously told Lake County News that, at one time, people were planting white sturgeon everywhere and they would occasionally turn up in various reservoirs throughout the state.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said it’s a horrible idea to bring non-native fish to Clear Lake. He noted people have dumped their aquariums into the lake.
Santana said he will come back and update the supervisors after the investigation and report on the sturgeon are completed.