TRAVERSE CITY — The annual sturgeon release ceremony by the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is set for Saturday.
The public is welcome at this second annual event, when sturgeon will be released into the Boardman/Ottaway River at Hannah Park on Sixth Street in Traverse City, part of a 20-year tribal plan to reintroduce the native fish to the waterway.
Starting at 11 a.m., the event will run until 2 p.m. and include drumming, a prayer with offerings and an arctic grayling fish display. Tribal Chairwoman Sandra Witherspoon will speak at the ceremony.
Refreshments will be provided. Northwood Soda donated drinks and Jimmy Johns provided a discount to organizers for the event, the Tribe’s Natural Resource Department Lead Fish and Wildlife Biologist Dan Mays said.
Mays expects several hundred people to attend and encourages spectators to bring a lawn chair.
“It’s great to see the community come together to walk the fish down together and to see the community rally around returning native species back to the Ottawa River. It’s very rewarding to see,” Mays said.
Some junior students taking ecology and advanced biology at Interlochen Arts Academy will participate.
“They are very excited! This event offers an incredible opportunity to start their ecological studies by actively engaging in a living story, rather than through traditional lectures or abstract problem sets,” Hannah Reyes, science instructor and coordinator for the event, said.
The students will be building upon this experience throughout the year, Reyes said, by exploring what it “means to be human in relation to the living world.”
“It’s a profound gift for my students to begin the year with such a perspective-shifting ceremony, allowing them to witness an extraordinary act of reconciliation ecology: bringing this organism home,” she said.
Participating in rehabilitating a species that will outlive themselves is part of what Reyes appreciates about the project.
The department aims for around 1,000 sturgeon to survive until they can be released, Mays said. This year’s number is about 100 less than last year, when survival rates were higher, and the department may “tweak things” again next year, he said.
The sturgeon are more resilient in warmer waters, unlike the arctic grayling the tribe also is working to reintroduce, so the hot summer temperatures didn’t impact them very much.
“They were actually loving it,” Mays said. “When things cooled down, their growth slows a little bit, they don’t eat as much, but they grew well this year.”
The fish were large enough to tag them with trackers a few weeks ago, about 12 grams or 6 inches long on average, he said.
Part of the department’s sturgeon reintroduction plan includes working with schools. Their “Nme in the Classroom” program places fish in local classrooms through the fall and winter, where students take care of them and learn about biology, water quality and the Anishinaabe culture.
This year, the program has doubled in size to 10 classrooms, and Interlochen is one of them.
Reyes said raising the fish is a “significant undertaking” but the project’s blending of storytelling and science offers a tangible reminder of the “long process of healing between humans and ecosystems.”
“I am thrilled and grateful that my students have the opportunity to be part of the hands that work in this story,” she said.