On Thursday, Oct. 30, UW-Eau Claire – Barron County hosted this year’s ninth installment of the Thursdays at the U lecture series: Monsters of the Lakes, presented by Neal Rosenberg.
Rosenberg currently works for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) as a hatcheries director.
“I have about 25-and-a-half years working for the department in fisheries,” Rosenberg said. “I’ve been all over the state and seen a lot of things.”
Rosenberg said he was born in Ohio but realized he wanted to move to Wisconsin after fishing in Lake Michigan as a kid and telling his parents he needed to work in the state one day.
The presentation centered around the wide variety of fish that can be found in Wisconsin’s lakes, starting with the muskellunge, also known as a muskie.
Rosenberg showed a video of the DNR spawning muskie, which involves collecting eggs from muskies that will then be hatched and raised by the DNR. This promotes sustainability and a healthy fish population.
“Once [the eggs] get back to the hatchery, they’re disinfected before we put them in jars,” Rosenberg said. “In the case there’s a virus or bacteria, we would not want to bring that into the hatchery from the lake.”
Next, Rosenberg presented on sturgeon fish, which can be found throughout Wisconsin.
“Sturgeon are an interesting fish,” Rosenberg said. “We do have a couple species of sturgeon in Wisconsin — the lake sturgeon and shovelnose sturgeon.”
Rosenberg said that shovelnose sturgeon are mainly located in the Mississippi, Wisconsin and Chippewa rivers, while lake sturgeon can be found in many rivers and the Great Lakes.
“The DNR does go out and collect [sturgeon] eggs and rear some of these fish,” Rosenberg said. “I don’t know if anyone saw the newspaper article on the St. Croix tribe in Hertel, but they also collected some eggs this spring and raised some fish … they had success and stocked those fish out.”
Rosenberg said that sturgeon have incredibly long lifespans, with female fish potentially living for over 150 years. He then showed a video showing the positive impact that Wisconsin sturgeon have had outside of the state.
The video, made in 2021, featured staff members of the Tennessee Aquarium collecting sturgeon eggs from the Wolf River, which would be transported back to their home state to re-establish sturgeon in the Tennessee River.
According to the Tennessee Wildlife Agency, sturgeon are currently an endangered species in Tennessee, which is why re-stocking initiatives like the one completed in the Wolf River are so important to the state.
“It was one of the better experiences I’ve had as an ichthyologist to see these huge fish spawning and be a small part of re-establishing those fish here in the Tennessee River,” said Bernie Kuhadja, ichthyologist at the Tennessee Aquarium.
To watch the full Monsters of the Lake lecture, visit this link.
The next Thursdays at the U lecture will be from 12:30-1:30 p.m. on Nov. 6 about Northstar Bison – Hobby to Business, presented by Lee and Mary Graese.
Garrison can be reached at [email protected].
