Black Lake Sturgeon Shivaree
Every winter fishermen, conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts gather near Onaway in northeastern Michigan to participate in a unique festival, the Sturgeon Shivaree. In case you didn’t know, a Shivaree is basically a noisy celebration and it does get noisy out on Black Lake. They gather on the ice to spear fish for sturgeon in a tightly controlled event that may last less than an hour. Sometimes the limit for the entire event is 7 fish. It is part of the payoff for another year of hard physical labor in pursuit of building up the population of endangered sturgeon in this closed water system.
The festival is just one event produced by Sturgeon For Tomorrow, an organization that is not only dedicated to the restoration of sturgeon populations, they are successful at it. In this river system alone, they have doubled the population of reproducing sturgeon in just a few years.