ORONO, Maine, Aug. 19 -- University of Maine issued the following news release:
Wildlife ecology major Jordan Anderson spent the summer tagging Atlantic and shortnose sturgeon in the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers through a Maine Sea Grant internship
While paddleboarding on the ocean last summer, Jordan Anderson was startled when a massive animal leaped from the water nearby. She assumed it was a porpoise. Instead, it was an Atlantic sturgeon - a chance encounter with the species that would become the focus of her research internship a year later.
Sturgeon have existed for nearly 200 million years, swimming alongside dinosaurs and surviving mass extinction events. Commonly referred to as "living fossils," they retain many of the same phys...