A new baseball team in Augusta is the latest to adopt a 400-million-year-old fish species as their mascot, joining in on a renaissance of sorts for the sturgeon.
You could say sturgeon — known for leaping out of the Kennebec River and leaving a serious splash in their wake — are having a moment.
The city of Augusta unofficially adopted the sturgeon as its downtown mascot three years ago when it commissioned artists to decorate 26 fiberglass fish that line downtown sidewalks.
“Each year the sturgeon come through and they swim upstream against the current,” Downtown Alliance Executive Director Jeremy Ashlock said. “Right around this time of year, we’ll see the sturgeon jumping out of the water and splashing back down and making a huge impact, which we would love to do down here for the local area.”
Just days ago, the Surgin’ Sturgeons summer league collegiate baseball team lined up on Morton Field for their home opener. The team logo depicts a fierce looking sturgeon clutching a baseball with his fin, his body hunched over as if winding up to deliver a smoking hot fastball.
The Surgin’ Sturgeons are one of five teams in the Greater Northeast Collegiate Baseball League that features the Bangor Babes, Old Orchard Beach Bugs, Sebago Slammin’ Salmon and the Gorham Lightning, said Jeff Musgrove, founder and operating partner of Wasabi Ventures Sports Management.
They chose the sturgeon for the Augusta team after hearing about locals who enjoy watching them in the river — and after seeing them in the downtown.
“For us, there’s got to be a tie to the community,” he said. “We want to be part of the community as much as we want to be a place where the ballplayers can come and develop.”
On the banks of the Kennebec River in Hallowell, sturgeon jumped out of the water as Sean Ledwin, director of the bureau of Sea-Run Fisheries at the Department of Marine Resources, talked about their remarkable resurgence following clean water standards and the 1999 removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta.
He described two types of sturgeon in the river — the Atlantic sturgeon and the short-nosed sturgeon.
The Atlantic sturgeon — the leapers — are usually six to seven feet long but can grow to 12 feet. The short-nosed sturgeon are about four feet long.
They can live to be 100 years, and many of the ones we see in the river now are likely 50 or 60 years old, Ledwin said.
“We call them a dinosaur fish, they’ve been around for 400 million years,” he said. “They’ve really seen a resurgence here in the Kennebec River.”
The Kennebec supports the largest spawning population in Maine and likely ranks first or second in the country, he said.
Estimates put the number of sturgeon in the Kennebec at 10,000 or more.
And just why do they jump?
Scientists aren’t entirely sure, Ledwin said.
“One theory is that they are kind of gulping air when they do that,” he said. “They use a swim bladder, like an air sac in their body to help them move. They are such a prehistoric fish they might be filling that air sac up.”
Another theory is that they are showing off during mating season.
When it comes to their diet, they are bottom feeders who eat worms and mussels. They are prey for sharks and seals.
And if you happen to be swimming in the Kennebec or are in a boat, Ledwin said not to worry, they are “super docile.”
“People have had a lot of really kind of magical experiences in little kayaks and stuff just seeing the sturgeon jump all around you,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
As for the colorful sturgeon in Augusta’s downtown, this is the last year the city will put them up for display. The downtown alliance will likely plan a swanky gala to bid them adieu and auction them off so the artists can recoup some of the cost that went in to creating them, Ashlock said.
After that, folks will need to see sturgeon at the ballpark or in the river the old-fashioned way.
“Right around now you find folks congregating at Riverfront Park or on the back decks of some of these local establishments and posting up and waiting for the sturgeon to splash,” he said.
