219 
National Marine 
Fisheries Service 
NOAA 
Fishery Bulletin 
ftr established in 1881 •<?. 
Spencer F. Baird 
First U S Commissioner 
of Fisheries and founder 
of Fishery Bulletin 
Seasonal occurrence of Atlantic sturgeon 
{Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) in the 
St. Johns River, Florida 
Adam G. Fox 1 
Edward S. Stowe 2 
Keith i. Dunton 3 
Douglas L. Peterson (contact author) 1 
Email address for contact author: sturgeon@uga.edu 
1 Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources 
University of Georgia 
180 East Green Street 
Athens, Georgia 30602-2152 
2 Odum School of Ecology 
University of Georgia 
140 East Green Street 
Athens, Georgia 30602-2202 
3 Department of Biology 
School of Science 
Monmouth University 
400 Cedar Avenue 
West Long Branch, New Jersey 07764 
Abstract—The Atlantic sturgeon 
(.Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) is 
an anadromous species that histori¬ 
cally occurred in the Atlantic Ocean 
along the North American coast from 
maritime Canada to the St. Johns 
River, Florida. A century of overhar¬ 
vesting and habitat loss has resulted 
in range-wide population declines, 
and in 2012 the species was listed 
under the U.S. Endangered Species 
Act. The extirpation of several indi¬ 
vidual populations—especially in the 
southeastern United States—was an 
important consideration in the fi¬ 
nal determination to list the species 
as endangered. Although historical 
data confirm the presence of Atlantic 
sturgeon in the St. Johns River, no 
recent evidence of a viable popula¬ 
tion exists for that river system. The 
primary objective of our study was 
to document the presence or absence 
of Atlantic sturgeon in the St. Johns 
River. During 2014-2015, we con¬ 
ducted nearly 200 hours of directed 
sampling with gill nets of different 
mesh sizes in the St. Johns River 
estuary but found no evidence of 
an extant population within the St. 
Johns River system. We did docu¬ 
ment the seasonal presence of sev¬ 
eral adult and subadult individuals 
that had been acoustically tagged by 
researchers working in other coastal 
systems, and that finding indicates 
that nonnatal individuals still use 
this estuary. 
Manuscript submitted 10 October 2017. 
Manuscript accepted 27 April 2018. 
Fish. Bull 116:219-227 (2018). 
Online publication date: 15 May 2018. 
doi: 10.7755/FB. 116.3-4.1 
The views and opinions expressed or 
implied in this article are those of the 
author (or authors) and do not necessarily 
reflect the position of the National 
Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. 
The Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser 
oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) is an anad¬ 
romous species characterized by a 
long life span and late age at ma¬ 
turity. Historically, this species oc¬ 
curred in the rivers and estuar¬ 
ies of the Atlantic Ocean along the 
North American coast from the St. 
Lawrence River, Canada, to the St. 
Johns River, Florida, United States 
(ASSRT, 2007). Commercial fisheries 
of both the United States and Can¬ 
ada exploited populations of Atlan¬ 
tic sturgeon throughout much of the 
19th and 20th centuries (Smith and 
Clugston, 1997); however, most of 
these fisheries collapsed during the 
early 20th century because of gross 
overharvesting, industrial develop¬ 
ment, and damming and pollution 
of Atlantic coast rivers (Smith and 
Clugston, 1997; ASSRT, 1998; Secor, 
2002; ASSRT, 2007). 
In response to the rapid popula¬ 
tion declines of Atlantic sturgeon that 
resulted from commercial overexploi¬ 
tation, federal management agencies 
in the United States and Canada 
implemented several regulatory pro¬ 
tections for this species during the 
late 20th century. Commercial fisher¬ 
ies for Atlantic sturgeon were closed 
in U.S. waters with the issuance of 
a 1998 federal moratorium, and in 
2012 the species was listed under the 
U.S. Endangered Species Act. Under 
this listing, distinct population seg¬ 
ments (DPSs) were designated for 5 
regions within U.S. waters: Gulf of 
Maine, New York Bight, Chesapeake 
Bay, North and South Carolina, and 
the southeastern United States (AS¬ 
SRT, 2007). All DPSs were listed as 
endangered except the Gulf of Maine 
DPS, which was listed as threatened 
(Federal Register, 2012a, 2012b). 
Although several northern popu¬ 
lations of Atlantic sturgeon have 
had at least some level of recovery 
in recent decades, many populations 
