Chasing a Living Dinosaur

A veteran biologist tracks the magnificent Gulf sturgeon.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson
photography by Beth Maynor Young and Ted Tucker

If this were the famous Ernest Hemingway story, Frank Parauka would be the Old Man.

And his fish—the one he stalks with much passion, pride, and a degree of proprietorship—is the Gulf sturgeon, a giant, jumping bottom-feeder with prehistoric roots.

Only sixty-five, Frank is not all that old, but otherwise he looks the part. With a substantial white mustache and fisherman’s tan, the Michigan native could be Santiago in tennis shoes and Bermuda shorts. He actually serves as a veteran fishery biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service based in Panama City.

We are off to net sturgeon on a schizophrenic stretch of the aptly named river, the Blackwater. The scene is an interesting study in contrast between civilization and untouched wilderness. Resort houses with groomed lawns stretch to family docks that are decked out with citronella candles and Bayliners. Around a bend in the river, we come upon pearly sandbars that look as if they’re from The Land That Time Forgot—diversified forests of yaupon, slash pine, cypress, and live oak. And then there are the leaping fish.

We launch the boat at a city park called Russell Harbor Landing. To the west is the heart of Milton with its historic buildings, law offices, and banks—the usual hallmarks of civilization. To the east is the busy Eglin Air Force Base. A few turns of the four-stroke engine carry us beyond the traffic and commerce and into the wild. For a while, we are passengers on the African Queen, going up the river and back in time.

Frank sometimes makes these rounds alone, but he prefers to have the help and company of young marine biologists who he believes might take up his cause: saving the sturgeon. These fish—scientific name Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi—can live seventy years, grow to a length of six to nine feet, and weigh more than three hundred pounds. You need physical help to wrestle, tag, and examine a fish like that.
Today the twenty-foot aluminum boat that Frank designed specifically for sturgeon adventures is full. Along to assist are Michelle Duncan, a fishery biologist, and intern Jerome Sachs, who both work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service. Duncan is a sturgeon scholar in her own right, with her own projects in place for several years. “I’ve not had anything like the experience Frank’s had,” she hastily qualifies.

Also aboard is Frank’s granddaughter, Kalli Kay Parauka. At age ten, she already knows how to check for laser tags on the fish hauled in, as well as how to fill in data charts.

Frank believes it is his duty to encourage the others to monitor and preserve the sturgeon. Coveted for its meat and especially its eggs, the Gulf sturgeon was on the brink of extinction not so long ago. But in 1991, it finally was listed under the Endangered Species Act. “In 1902, documented landings for the river systems in West Florida were almost 352,000 pounds, mostly harvested for caviar,” Frank says. By 1917, a harvest of about 40,000 pounds was recorded; by 1918, that amount was 4,900 pounds. Once the sturgeon was listed as threatened, its numbers slowly began to rebound.

Even so, sturgeon recovery is threatened by other things, such as loss of habitat and deterioration of water quality. Also a threat are dams blocking the migration pattern of the fish between the Gulf of Mexico in winter and the freshwater rivers of the Southeast in spring. “With drought conditions comes renewed interest in building dams,” he notes.

The fish that Frank admires as “a living dinosaur” left its first fossil imprint more than two hundred million years ago. “Once they’re gone you’ll never see them again. We wouldn’t want to be responsible for allowing the end of these animals.”

Frank expertly throws a gill net into the water as he talks. Within ten minutes the floats begin a telltale bobbing, signaling a catch. That’s when the storybook excitement begins. The first fish hauled over the side measures 6 feet, 3 inches, and weighs 110 pounds. As it happens, the first also will be the day’s biggest, making my introduction to the Gulf sturgeon dramatic. Frank has done this thousands of times before, but his genuine enthusiasm is contagious. It’s as if he’s seeing the sturgeon for the first time, like me.

“They are truly beautiful fish,” he says with utter conviction, pointing out the colors and patterns in the rows of bony plates, or scutes, along the body. And there is a kind of vivid, pop-art symmetry that the black-and-white photographs in books don’t convey. The sturgeon may well be the last exoskeletal fish around. Located beneath the head, its suction mouth—a science-fiction-looking muscle—seems to be trying to tell us something.

There are a few moments of confusion as the big catch squirms its way out of the net and onto the bottom of the boat. Frank and Duncan manage to wrangle the fish into a holding tank. Work has to proceed quickly, Frank says, so as not to keep any fish in the net longer than an hour.

The fish spends much of its seventy-year lifespan in rivers like this one. Adding to its vulnerability, the sturgeon must be between nine and twelve years old to reproduce, with males maturing earlier than females. And it is believed that the female spawns only a few times during its lifetime.

Admittedly, the Gulf sturgeon doesn’t look vulnerable to the untrained eye. In fact, Frank’s agency routinely posts warning signs for boaters, who sometimes collide with the huge leaping fish, known to jump as high as the much smaller mullet. Why do they jump? No one really knows. But speculations abound—some say they’re looking for more oxygen, flushing their gills, or simply trying to avoid alligators and other predators. Regardless, the occasional collision between man and fish sometimes causes serious injury. Boaters have suffered broken ribs and concussions, cracked teeth, and collapsed lungs.

At the spot Frank leads us to, there’s certainly no shortage of sturgeon. With deceptive ease and speed, Frank manages to haul ten fish from the river. And because of constant monitoring, he knows where to look. His study monitors sturgeon in the Escambia, Yellow, Choctawhatchee, and Apalachicola Rivers, as well as the Blackwater. Once, he netted an impressive boatload of the fish when he had Chinese visitors along for the ride. “They thought we were gods or something,” Frank jokes.

Science and government are the only forces at work here, however—they are a powerful coalition that can save endangered species and reverse the natural order. And Frank makes a passionate case: saving the sturgeon for future generations is an indisputably good idea.
“Frank has a genuine passion for his work, which is equally contagious to those who are around him,” according to Dr. Todd Slack, biologist and curator of fishes with the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson, Mississippi.

“His efforts toward the conservation of Gulf sturgeon have been untiring, and he has always portrayed an unselfish attitude when providing advice on the subject. When it comes to Gulf sturgeon conservation, you couldn’t ask for a better man to be in your corner.”

That keeper of the flame, defender of this fantastic fish, has been up since 4 a.m., readying the boat and equipment and driving to Milton from Panama City. He is, understandably, a bit weary now. The crew sits on the bank of the Blackwater River, savoring the morning’s good luck and the last hint of morning cool on a hot day. Kalli Kay—who calls her grandfather “Poppi”—has done Frank proud today, pitching in on tasks from tagging to tracking. Kalli Kay shyly admits that she’d like to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps, making her career in science, perhaps marine biology.

Frank smiles a beatific, Old Man smile, taking it all in, quietly surveying at least a couple of generations of hope.