Wednesday March 25, 2026
UC Davis —
White sturgeon can grow to 12 feet long and live for a hundred years. Despite this, not a great deal is known about the lives of these ancient fish as they move between rivers, estuaries and the ocean. Recently, UC Davis researchers published a study of how white sturgeon move around the San Francisco Estuary and Sacramento river system as they grow and mature. The research shows how white sturgeon face environmental hazards, fishing and other threats over their lives.
The team, led by Jon Walter, senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, made use of years of acoustic telemetry data collected in the Delta region. Researchers had previously fitted individual sturgeon with tags that give an individual acoustic code. This code is picked up when a tagged fish swims near a recording station in the river.