A sturgeon washed up about a mile north of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge last month. (Anthony Demonia)
(Crocker also noted that NMFS is in the process of proposing critical habitat for Atlantic sturgeon, with the public comment period on the proposed rule open until September 1. Under the Endangered Species Act, NMFS is required to do this, as well as devise a recovery plan. For fiscal year 2016, $235,000 in federal funds became available for grant recipients addressing sturgeon management needs, “including vessel strikes,” wrote Crocker in her email.)
Lipscomb said a study of the sturgeon population by Northeast Area Monitoring & Assessment Program (NEAMAP), which is cited in the BiOp, grossly overestimates the numbers. The survey, which estimated the total adult population of Atlantic sturgeon off the East Coast between 2007 and 2012 as between 33,888 and 338,882 fish, has been discredited by scientists, he said. “It is a stock assessment in which gigantic assumptions are made and it’s not peer reviewed.”
A better gauge of the total population of adult sturgeon spawning in the Hudson, according to Lipscomb, which is also quoted in the BiOp, is a study conducted by the DEC from 1985 to 1995, which pegged the total number of adult fish to 863. Dwayne Fox, an associate professor at Delaware State who has been doing sonar counts of sturgeon near Hyde Park, one of three known spawning areas, as well as keeping track of 400 fish that have been caught and implanted with transmitters off the Delaware coast, agreed the DEC count is fairly accurate. “On an average year, such as in 2015, we might have 10 or 11 fish go up the Delaware and maybe 55 tagged animals going up the Hudson,” he said. “They’re coming up the river in the order of hundreds, not thousands.
“The problem with ship strikes is that there hasn’t been any standardized monitoring program,” Fox added. “People have become more aware of the Atlantic sturgeon,” which he agreed with NMFS could account for the increased numbers of dead fish. “We don’t know the true magnitude of the problem, only what’s reported.”
Fox agreed with Lipscomb that the amount and speed of boat traffic associated with the bridge construction was “an intractable problem.” On his numerous trips up and down the river to and from Hyde Park to do his sturgeon research, he’s observed “guys in the workboats … ripping right through the no-wake zone,” which has a top speed limit of five knots. “Those guys going through there are not going the speed limit.”
Lipscomb said the findings of the new BiOp by NMFS have made the Riverkeeper lawsuit, filed by the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, more difficult to win. “The burden of proof is difficult because both NMFS and the bridge contractor allege that even a fish found freshly sliced by a propeller within half a mile of the project, where all vessels except ones from the project are barred, cannot be definitely attributed to the construction of the project. The new BiOp protects the project, not the fish.”
Calls to DEC personnel weren’t returned by press time. A DEC press release issued in February noted that the numbers of juvenile Atlantic sturgeon in the Hudson, which the DEC has been surveying since 2006, reported in 2015were the highest in the 10 years of the survey. “Encouragingly, biologists are now seeing a steady increase in the number of Atlantic sturgeon in the Hudson River as the first protected fish are coming into their prime breeding years,” reads the release. The sturgeon’s hoped-for recovery is expected to take years, since female sturgeon spawn starting at age 7 to 30, and then only every two to five years.
Responded Lipscomb: “There’s no basis for saying more juvenile fish means there are more adult sturgeon spawning. This is not science.”
The DEC notes that “threats remain,” including by-catch by commercial fisheries, power plant impingement and entrainment from the plant’s water withdrawals (the 2016 BiOp notes that Indian Point has a permit to kill hundreds of sturgeon related to the water withdrawals for its three units through 2033), and mortality from vessel strikes. The release explicitly states “there is no evidence that the construction for the replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge is the cause of the increased number of reported sturgeon mortality.”
Such reasoning, echoed in NMFS’s 2016 BiOp, sets a bad precedent, Lipscomb said. “NMFS will deal with this next time around by raising the take. They’ve used science to protect the construction project instead of the sturgeon. The boat traffic remains extremely hazardous for fish transiting the construction zone.”
It’s the nuclear power plant that has hoovered up all the fish. A modern facility uses no water intake at all but you won’t hear about that sad to say. So not just sturgeon but shad, salmon, who knows what else…all gone.
[…] It must also be noted that during the construction of the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, a significant number of sturgeon were killed, apparently from being struck by the propellers of work… […]