Sturgeon Moon
Earlier this evening, I laid my tools on the cabin top of the boat on which I was working, and settled-in to watch the rust red moon crawl to the shoulders of the Hudson Highlands. Once there, it continued upward, as if loosed from the grip of gravity, and floated beyond the river’s cragged peaks.
It was a Sturgeon Moon. According to the Farmer’s Almanac:
The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during [August]. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.
River, mountain, moon, boat; there was no place I would rather have been, except perhaps parked on Bob Gabrielson’s Burd Street Dock in Nyack, NY, of an early May morning in 1981. That day, I climbed out of my pickup truck camper to breakfast on blackfish and watch the red sun rise one hour prior to our fishing tide. Just four weeks earlier, I had resigned my job in the state legislature, moved into the old black Ford, and driven south to join Bob’s commercial fishing crew for the full shad season.
It was a dry spring. The increased salt in the estuary brought all manner of ocean fish into the lower river — blackfish, flounder, sea robin, starfish, and jellyfish. The previous evening, we had picked up a young Atlantic sturgeon, about ten inches in length. A rubber band was wrapped around its midsection, an uncommon but known phenomenon on the river. I would see it again on a different baby sturgeon two summers later, off Garrison, NY.
The band cinched the sturgeon’s body turning the flesh beneath raw. If the constriction did not kill it first, a deadly infection or fungus would surely attack its young midsection. At some point in its short life, the fish had swum into the carelessly tossed band, which became caught on the rough-skinned body and remained while the sturgeon grew.
Sturgeon are a lens into the past. They are often called living dinosaurs. Their lineage dates back 200 million years. In late spring, adult Atlantic sturgeon leave their ocean home to migrate up the Hudson, and other East Coast rivers, to spawn in the freshwater reaches. Young-of-the-year sturgeon use the estuary’s nourishing waters as a nursery ground until they are about three-feet long and hearty enough to begin a life at sea. (Read more here)
Author Robert H. Boyle described sturgeon well in his book The Hudson River: A Natural and Unnatural History:
They have long, leathery snouts on the front of the head, while the bottom part is soft and white with a vacuum cleaner–type mouth that can hang down like the sleeve on an old coat. The eyes are small and glistening, like threatening peas, and the hard body is almost crocodilian, armed with five longitudinal rows of sharp shields, or scutes.
There are twenty-six subspecies of sturgeon worldwide, all with similar physical characteristics, all imperiled.
Just a few miles south of our nets, on the Piermont waterfront, Cornetta’s Seafood Restaurant boasted a sight found at no other eatery in the Hudson Valley. Mounted on the wall of the upper dining room was a seven-foot, ten-inch Atlantic sturgeon. Alive, it probably weighed 250 pounds.
“There isn’t a person who doesn’t say, ‘I can’t believe this is out of this river,’” proprietor Suren Kilerciyan once told me. “And they all call it ugly— until they learn that sturgeon is where caviar comes from, and then they change their minds.”
It was by no means the largest sturgeon ever caught. The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats reports a documented female beluga sturgeon captured in the Volga estuary in 1827 that weighed 3,250 pounds and measured twenty-four feet long. According to Boyle, the largest Hudson River sturgeon reached 13 feet.
Its natural history would be the sturgeon’s most remarkable aspect but for its stunning decline. Only shark and humans prey on sturgeon. Guess which has decimated the population. Over-harvesting of its meat and caviar, pollution, habitat alteration, power plant intakes — the list of insults that humans have invented trump every challenge thrown in the sturgeon’s path during 2,000,000 centuries of life on Earth. In 1996, Atlantic surgeon were banned for capture on the Hudson River, and in 2009 declared endangered, after an unbroken chain of fishing seasons dating back to the same indigenous tribes who honored the Sturgeon Moon.
Imagine those millennia as a twenty-four-hour clock; it has taken humans less than one -tenth of a second to threaten the survival of all twenty-six subspecies of this enduring, prehistoric fish worldwide. Worth remembering the next time someone passes you the caviar, or you think to cast off a rubber band.
On a far less poetic note, more relevant to the fish than the moon, a Florida research organization is raising sturgeon:
http://www.mote.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=Sturgeon_program%20landing%20page&category=Aquaculture%20Research%20and%20Development
Hi Terry, Thanks for visiting us at EarthDesk, and for pointing out the Mote facility. I have visited it and it is quite remarkable. Here on my home river, the Hudson, our once thriving sturgeon population has been in terrible decline. I hope that the Mote work will come up with some answers for both restoration and commercial purposes. Thanks again for the suggestion. I encourage you to add your email to our post alerts, on the home page. Hope to see you here again. All the best, John Cronin, managing editor.
Your article brought me right back to my childhood. I grew up in Nyack in the 1940’s and spent many a summer’s day crabbing from the old Main St. Dock.
My father fished for shad – how we loved the roe.
I watched many a moon rise over the Hudson – now I watch it rise over the Sangre de Christo Mts. east of Santa Fe, NM.
I miss the Hudson River Valley and can remember when the Clearwater was first launched and Pete Seeger sang from the decks while the boat was anchored off the Nyack Memorial Park; I even knew a couple of kids who crewed.
Thanks for the memories and what a beautiful world it was then
Hi Carol, We are happy to see you here. I have many fond memories of the Nyack waterfront as well. Sadly, my mentor, Bob Gabrielson, has passed on, as has the commercial shad fishery on the Hudson River, shutdown because of steep declines in the population. But I am every hopeful we will turn that around. I hope you come back to visit the site and add your email to our subscription box on the home page. All the best, John Cronin, managing editor.
Thank you for two wonderful articles. I saw this moon driving the NJ Turnpike two nights ago, and marveled at its beauty behind the construction in Central Jersey — what used to be a major East Coast bread basket and is rapidly becoming one big housing development. Last night I saw it again as we crested a hill on RT 7 between Manchester and Arlington VT as the moon “broke free” over the tops of the Green Mountains. New Jersey or Vermont, when the moon rises the human impact on the environment appears diminished. It is comforting to know that moon will rise regardless of how badly we abuse this beautiful planet. But it saddens me to think that few if any will appreciate that beauty.
Hi Ursula, Thank your for visiting. I hope you had a chance to read the other comments here. You had good company from Long Island, to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, to Tokyo Japan. And from what I see elsewhere online, many thousands were moved by the Sturgeon Moon. Thank you for adding your thoughts from New Jersey. They are welcome indeed. I hope to see you back here. Consider joining our subscription list on the home page. All the best, John Cronin, managing editor
The moon rose pink-tinged in haze above the meadow at our farm north of Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin, a large round child-faced moon for grand-daughter Dagmar’s birth at 8.11 pm in Los Angeles. Sturgeon survive in Lake Winnebago near Appleton, but not in Sturgeon Bay, once all theirs.
Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin! Is there a better name for a place? I cannot think of one. Thanks for writing your lovely post and your wonderful news. Congratulations! I have great hopes that Dagmar and my grandchildren will inherit a better environmental legacy. We hope to see you around EarthDesk again. There is a subscription box on the home page, if you would like to hear more from us. Thank you again, Carol. All the best, John Cronin, managing editor
We enjoyed the August full moon from northern California. Thanks for the wonderful post.
Hi Don, My daughter in San Francisco enjoyed it as well, as did folks here at EarthDesk, from as far away as Tokyo. I am glad you added your name and location. Do visit again, and note our “Join the Discussion” box on the home page. We always welcome news from the West Coast, so stay in touch. All the best, John Cronin, managing editor.
Loved the collective bond we are making thanks to this August full moon. From tokyo, where I am now, I was evoking this days those moons that carve a meaning in our memories with their ancestral resonances, the blue moon, the harvest moon and I was ignorant but needing a resonance for the full moon of this week. The sturgeon story, places this resonance within a frame of millions of years… I appreciate so much how it conveys a feeling of respect and celebration. Thanks to all.
Javier, Thank you for your comment from across the planet. Yes we are all connected my millions of years of ecological legacy and the 26 different subspecies of this remarkable fish that dwelt here long before we arrived. Your comment has inspired us here at EarthDesk who are happy to be reminded that respect and celebration are inextricably linked. We hope to hear from you again, and that you will sign up on our Home Page. All the best, John Cronin, managing editor
I watched the same moon rise; i was out in my boat off the tide rips of Montauk, hunting striped bass with my editor Jack Macrae. Our luck was poor, the fishes’ luck was thus excellent, and for me it was a striper moon. Sturgeon or striper, it’s just another way to say, “I am here; this is the place I belong to.” In February I watched an elephant moon in Kenya, and in March a wolf moon in Yellowstone; those moons belonged to other creatures and other peoples but a moonrise always seems to raise the question of where we belong and what we are doing. And yes, that clock is loudly ticking, you can easily watch it changing startlingly over the course of one life, and we will have a lot of explaining to do.
Hi Carl, Thank you for adding your voice. I too cannot help but think of the many other moons that shine over our troubled estuary — Striper Moon, Shad Moon, Smelt Moon, Herring Moon. We do have much explaining to do. It is hard to believe my son can’t learn first-hand about our centuries old net fishery on the Hudson. It is not to be. I am hopeful his children will see that noble, sustainable tradition rise again, as populations return, perhaps in ecological defiance of power plants, invasives, disruptors, and more. Your eloquence is always welcome here at EarthDesk, in any form you wish. Thank you for contributing to the discussion. All the best to you, my friend, John.
I saw this amazing moon rising over the Croton River last night, above the hill you can see looking east from from the vast way-over-illuminated Croton Harmon train station parking lot. How nice, John, to know now this great name for this beautiful August Hudson River Estuary Moon. My amazing year new to Croton on Hudson started with your “Riverkeepers” and Bob Boyles wonderful “Hudson” by your reference therein. Thank you! I hope to see you again soon, perhaps up in Beacon at BIRE. Cheers and Happy Summer, 2013. ~Kevin
Kevin, Welcome! I am happy to see you here, and hear a voice from the Hudson estuary’s most important tributary estuary. Thank you for your kind words. I am with you about Croton-Harmon Station. It always looks to me as if an all-night Yankee game is being played there. Time to do something. I hope to see you here often. All the best, John.
Dear Andy….and, John…
Thanks, Andy, for sharing your piece and its link to John’s. John, I’ve read a fair amount of your writing, but this piece was very moving. It spoke simultaneously to the ages and to the moment. It also spoke to a part of our global existence in a way that is so unifying and peaceful in the midst of a world which too often appears to defy such qualities.
Pattie and I are off to Vermont for a couple of days. Today is our 48th . As we were arriving last night, we noted what I now know to be the “Sturgeon Moon”. I’ve erroneously referred to it as a “Harvest Moon”, and now know such reference is premature for this time of year. One of my uncles used to refer to it as a “Hunter’s Moon” (in retrospect, I hope he was not hunting at night.. :o( ). And, then, there is the “Blue Moon” which, if you are a movie goer, finds its way into the new Woody Allen film, Blue Jasmine, which those of you interested in themes of “justice” and “class” may find interesting.
But, in typical Pastore fashion, I have strayed from my message. Not only did I find your (plural) works wonderful, but it feels good to know that as you (again, plural) were contemplating that beautiful lunar sight, so were we and, poetically and despite hundreds of miles of separation, we were connected. I wondered why it felt so good…
:o) Joe