MILWAUKEE — You can visit two festivals in one this weekend — Harbor Fest and Sturgeon Fest in Milwaukee’s Harbor District — where baby sturgeon will be released into the Milwaukee River.

Sturgeon are the largest fish species in the Great Lakes, reaching up to seven feet in length and 250 pounds. They’re also ancient; a fish that can live for over a century, dates back to the dinosaurs and even looks prehistoric.

“It looks more like a dinosaur or a reptile,” Citizen Science Manager at Riveredge Nature Center Mary Holleback told WTMJ. “They actually do not have scales like modern fish do. They have scutes, which means they have these armored plates.”

Sturgeon Fest joins Milwaukee’s Harbor Fest celebration thanks to the Saukville-based nature center. They’ve been helping restore lake sturgeon to their native home for over 20 years through the Milwaukee River Lake Sturgeon Rehabilitation Program.

For $15, you can sponsor a baby sturgeon to release into the Milwaukee River on Sunday. And that might not be the last you hear from your new bottom-dwelling dinosaur friend — each sturgeon comes with a certificate and registration number for tracking, so you’ll be notified if the DNR spots it in a survey or it happens to swim by one of the PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tag sensors in the Milwaukee River.

“Last spring when about 20 fish came up the river, one of them was a fish from 2007, there were a bunch of them from 2011,” said Holleback. “It’s been fun hearing about these fish that have survived and are coming back.”

The sturgeon is a keystone species of Lake Michigan, meaning it has an especially large impact on its natural environment and serves as an indicator of an ecosystem’s overall health. Sturgeon spend much of their adult life in lakes and use tributaries like the Milwaukee River to spawn. But once human disruptions like dams and overfishing invaded their breeding habitat, sturgeon practically disappeared from the Milwaukee River over 100 years ago.

Families are encouraged to join the sturgeon release and see other live animals at Sturgeon Fest: “These fish live so long that they’ll outlive us [adults] for sure,” said Holleback “The kids are going to be the caretakers of these fish in the future.”

Riveredge Nature Center has a limited number of sturgeon available to sponsor, but all are welcome to watch the release. Harbor Fest runs 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. with the sturgeon release 12 – 2 p.m. on Sunday 09/29/24.

Visit: https://riveredgenaturecenter.org/program/sturgeon-fest/#register-sturgeon to check fish availability and learn more about sturgeon conservation.