#lake ask

[anonyippee]

Roan: Alright, I'm going. See you.

*Lake and you waved and Roan left.*

Lake: Hm... I'm a little worried that this monster will find a new victim and can really do something in the factory. And not even in one factory, but in all of them. Hmm.... Listen, maybe you'll come with me to our factories? Usually, we don't show anyone how we work. But since such circumstances have happened, why not give you the opportunity to see it. Well, what do you say, Snek?

hmm,,,

i mean, sure

factories are cool B)

[superiorsturgeon]

out of curiosity, why do you like sturgeons so much?

A chance to info dump about my favorite fish…?!

I grew up in the Great Lakes area of North America, where fishing is pretty popular but everyone knows that fish populations aren’t anything like “the good old days” when people took out huge numbers of fish while messing up their spawning sites. I got pretty into fishing when I found out that I could catch bluegill in the surrounding farm ponds, and once in a while my family took me to an isolated fishing cabin for vacation, but for years I never encountered a wild fish bigger than a kilogram or two.

BUT THEN…

I found out about sturgeon! They were HUGE fish that had once lived in the rivers and lakes all around my home, and better yet, fish almost exactly like modern sturgeon had existed all the way back in the Cretaceous period alongside the dinosaurs, and they STILL EXIST TODAY!!! The fact that small numbers of these huge dinosaur fish still existed made them seem almost like a real-life lake monster/cryptid, except that we had proof of their existence!

Furthermore, there’s just nothing else like them. Sturgeon get big. Like, REALLY big. The record for the largest sturgeon was almost 11 meters/24 feet long, which is colossal for freshwater animals. They have armor plates of bone running down their sides, and at the same time they don’t have bony skeletons. They also have a crazy mouth structure, which allows them to actually pop their jaws out like a tube and suck up food. And on top of all of this, the adults are absolute tanks. I’ve seen skin nearly 8mm thick, and it’s so tough that people make leather out of it, and they occasionally lose fins or even entire gill plates and just keep on swimming! (I found out about that last one when I tried to wrestle a big female out of a river and my hand went straight into her gills. She didn’t seem that bothered by it!)

For a long time I filed sturgeon along with Alligator Gar, Giant Mekong catfish, and Yangtze paddlefish as a semi-legendary fish that may still exist, but I was never going to see except possibly in an aquarium, until I enrolled in graduate school. For those unfamiliar with grad school in the US, it typically involves both high-level classes as well as an independent research project the student designs and carries out with help from an experienced professor. When my mentor asked what kind of thing I wanted to study, I tossed out “sturgeon” as one such possibility, expecting to hear that I would probably have to limit myself to more common/accessible species.

I was blown away when she said “Actually, I think I know a guy…”

For the next several years, I got to ride along collecting wild adult sturgeon, gathering eggs, and raising the baby fish in a lab and in a hatchery. I was holding something that I had thought of as a semi-mythical lake/river monster in my own hands! I got to see a river choked with giants as big as 2 meters long, and I got to hold a 5-centimeters mottled baby whose armored scutes were still sharp and possessed the little arrowhead shape and big black pectoral fins that remind me of Mickey Mouse ears! In the video below you can even see a little heartbeat! (Don’t worry, this little guy was returned to the tank soon after to recover from his anesthesia!)

Sadly, I didn’t find anything super groundbreaking in my research, but my experience DID land me a job working in sturgeon aquaculture! If you’ve ever had caviar that wasn’t poached, it probably came from a sturgeon farm, and if you want to see a lot of big fish up close, this is a good place to do it! I probably personally handled more individual sturgeon than there are wild fish in several sturgeon species. In addition, while the wild broodstock I mentioned above might reach 2 meters and over 50kg, the sturgeon I dealt with at the farm would easily double that, and there were a LOT of them! I got to see sturgeon behavior that had never been recorded in field guides, and even a few crazy one-in-a-million mutations like the infamous “ghost” sturgeon!

I even got the opportunity to cook my own sturgeon meat (Yeah, I basically turned into the Touden siblings from Dungeon Meshi except for sturgeon instead of RPG monsters). I got pretty good at making smoked sturgeon, but the meat is also good on the grill or baked, and people have been cooking them in various ways for centuries.

My favorite part of the job was physically wrestling the big fish! Sturgeon are easier to grab than other fish with the right know-how, but a human-sized fish often has its own plans for the day and won’t always cooperate. I was pretty good at moving the adults by the time I left that job, but it was still a wild rodeo every time!

Even more exciting was how we spawned each new generation of sturgeon. In the wild, they form massive spawning runs in big rivers that in the past would be enough to tip small boats, but in a lab or farm we have to use other means. I’ll spare you the details, but I am one of a small number of people who have surgically extracted eggs from a live sturgeon and sutured them back up to swim another day.

The tldr of this essay is that sturgeon are a big, crazy-unique fish that have been around a long time, and I’ve spent a lot of my career handling and working with them. There’s just nothing like them for a fish nerd and they’re damn cool!

(Clip art not mine, I think @sturgeonposting drew or shared it!)

[hellenhighwater]

why is ontario no business of yours? -sincerely, someone who lives 15 minutes from its shore

I live in Michigan; please observe which Great Lakes are in contact with Michigan. Ontario is a Great Lake, but it's not Michigan's Great Lake. We get four out of five; I can get to any other Great Lake without leaving my state.

I would need to go through Canada or several other states to get to Ontario. It's lovely, but it is very literally no business of mine.

[beansnpeets]

Thinking about human behaviour compared to animal behaviour again.

It's funny to hear people (the older gens) complaining that "kids these days are lazy, they don't wanna work, etc." What do we get for busting our asses? There is no reward. Many will never own homes. Many are unemployed, trying to find work, and nobody will hire them because they don't have a million years experience and a masters degree OR they want people to work for minimum wage??? People are giving up because there is no reward. Why would we do all this for nothing?

Same as a dog that won't recall when you haven't reinforced it with a reward. Your dog isn't going to do what you tell it to if there is no incentive. No, your dog SHOULDN'T listen just because you're boss and it should respect you. That isn't how it works. They don't think that way. And honestly neither do people.

When we went hiking Sprocket wasn't always taking treats gently from me when I recalled her or she checked in and I rewarded and my one friend told me to stop giving her treats. I told him I won't work for free so why should she. And he said "I do things for free all the time because I want to do them," and I didn't say it then, but I wish I had, but if you like doing it, that's the incentive. It's a self-rewarding behaviour. Just like anything else a dog does, like chasing a squirrel or sniffing things or getting into the trash. Heeling instead of going off to sniff stuff or recalling off of something they want to chase is something you have to reinforce. You have to give them something better so they make the choice you want them to make. They won't make it just because they *respect* you. They won't willingly recall off of exciting prey out of RESPECT. You need to give them a tangible reward for that. You cannot possibly expect your dog to listen just because and then punish them for disobeying you.

Yeah, Sprocket bit my fingers a couple times. The one time pretty hard. But she was excited. She knows how to take gently and I reminded her and she tried very hard to be gentle most of the time. I wasn't going to stop rewarding her for checking in with me and recalling while we were off leash hiking in the woods. I want her to know that coming back to me is good and in the event of an emergency I would like her to not blow me off.

[lionpawsdiary]

aww, Lionpaw is so cute! Did she tell Spikedawn about meeting the other cat? Or did she keep that to herself?

[tangledinink]

How long do the hatchling eggs stay inside before being laid?

here, here's way more information than your question required as an answer. [ ✩ the gemini ✩ ]

[i-give-you-a-fish]

i would love a fish… i love all fish but lately i’ve been real into freshwater game fish 🩵

Perhaps the best freshie of all time

You get a Lake Sturgeon

Acipenser fulvescens

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Check out. The fully-sexual charged cinematic movement design.

Cnetizens: How did the director come up with the idea to have him kneel on a playing card, adding so much aesthetic energy, is that some kind of genius?

[kyri45]

Omg you're a gay monkeys fan...AND a gay hedgehog fan?!?!?!! Can you get any cooler?!?!? WAHOOO

Oh I can, because I ALSO have a cold.

[anonyippee]

Roan & Lake:...... 50?!

Lake: I've never been a Robloxian who has 50 names. I usually saw Robloxians, who have 1,2,3 and even 4 names. But to have so many names.. I didn't expect it at all.

Roan: Come on, Lake, maybe someone gave her so many names, or maybe she decided to have so many names for anyone to call her what they want. I wouldn't be surprised if she has a whole list of 50 names with her. *sighs* I wish I had so many names.

Lake: Roan, don't. I won't be able to get used to it if you suddenly call yourself by a different name.

Roan: I'm kidding. :)))) We have one such unique Robloxian. *thought* Maybe one day, I will have many names.

Lake: Roan!

Roan: Okay, okay. I don't know what you're going to call her, Lake, but I like name Ki. :>

Lake: Uh.. I have not yet decided. But are you comfortable with having so many names?

i mean yea- idk why i have so many, i can’t really find just one thing to call myself by

ki (it’s a shortened form of another name) is the one i stick to usually

[sturgeonposting]

hey so i work at the georgia aquarium and i want u to know our lake sturgeon is named Dwight!

GIVE IT UP FOR DWIGHT EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you anon for this precious information. Meeting Dwight this summer was an honor.

[irodimww]

had this idea for a while ueuehfjfggjvb (OKAY HEAR ME OUT LISTEN LISTEN. WHAT IF. WHAT IF MORRO—when he was alive—LIKED BEING IN WATER…)

had the silly idea of ‘omg what if whenever Morro was out swimming he would always grab and catch fish in the water’

[attleboy]

I saw your ask that was about Pomni's prey drive and I couldn't help but draw this cuz of it xD

And if youre wondering why Pomni is wet even tho she caught a bird not a fish- Well I kinda zoned out when I drew this and didnt notice till I was basically already done with it alksd- But lets ignore that and just say the birds were right next to the lake and she dove right for them and fell into to the like in the process lol

AAAAAA NIGHT THANK YOU........ having your art dropped in my inbox is such an honor... :)

and yeah that's pretty much how it'd go if she had a little less impulse control... they'd be enjoying a nice walk when suddenly pomni bolts and comes back like this... and ragatha just has to go "oh wowww... 😬 uh... 🙁 thaaaanks..... 😬" because if she doesn't pomni will hit her with The Stare

[habken]

'nothing of note' ??

all fish are of note

okay two rock bass and four smallmouth

[lionpawsdiary]

Marigold, why did you help Lionpaw, that kitten you met? It's not like clan cats like her are kind to outsiders