“Docks to base. Come in base. Over.”
“This is base. Go ahead. Over”
“Uh, there’s a three foot long live sturgeon in this boat. How do you want me to handle this? … Over. ”
At 0940 this morning, one of my coworkers at Croton Sailing School found a young sturgeon swimming in the cockpit of one of the 24 foot sailboats. Thanks to the rainstorm that hit overnight, the endangered fish was able to survive in the water that had collected. As for how the sturgeon got into the boat in the first place, I’m guessing it jumped-as I see them do multiple times a day on the river-and the arc of its leap took it into the cockpit.
It caused quite the excitement for the 54 kids sitting at the park at sailing camp, and gave us an opportunity to talk to them about the endangered prehistoric animal that visited us. They learned about how long sturgeon have been around for (around 70 million years) and that the fish come up the Hudson to spawn. Surprisingly, only two of my seventeen campers knew that it was illegal to catch sturgeon because of how threatened the species is.
We were able to release the fish back into the river fairly quickly, and soon after a group of nine year olds got into the boat to go sailing!
Waterbased 