On the morning of Tuesday, December 10, “Steven” the Sturgeon was found unresponsive in his tank in Mary Brisbois’ classroom. 

  “When I got to work this morning we noticed that the fish was in the bottom of the tank not moving. So I immediately called Sean the biologist who had come in and talked to us and he came right over, he was like five minutes, he came right over and he took the fish with him, he confirmed that the fish was dead,” Brisbois said.

  Sean Leask is a fish and wildlife biologist who works for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who runs the ongoing project to stock sturgeon and arctic grayling in the Boardman River. He has helped coordinate the sturgeon in classrooms program and came in to speak to Brisbois’ classes about the project on Monday, December 8. The goal of the project is for students to help raise baby sturgeon that will then be released into the Boardman River in the Spring in order to help restore native species populations.

  “He assured us that we didn’t do anything wrong, our water chemistry was correct, we hadn’t been neglectful. I was worried about the temperature because our tank is really cold, and he said that temperature wouldn’t have been lethal, it could have just made it be dormant. So he’s going to take it and perform a necropsy on it and then it’d be really great if we could get those results back,” Brisbois said. 

  Junior Neva Lord has greatly enjoyed having the Sturgeon in her environmental science class with Brisbois, and she was devastated when she discovered the fish had died when she arrived at school Tuesday morning.  

  “I would say just it being in the back of the classroom and being able to look back at it [was exciting.] I think it was fun because occasionally we would go back and just check on it,” Lord said.

  After announcing the news to her classes, Brisbois answered any questions that students had about the situation surrounding the death of the sturgeon. However, because the cause of death was sudden and unknown, there are still many questions circling the circumstances.  

  “I’m wondering what caused it because I know people were saying that there’s not a specific cause but I just want to know more specifically what happened to it and if there’s anything we could do to possibly prevent it,” Lord said. 

  To enable West to continue participating in the sturgeon in classrooms program, a new sturgeon will be delivered to Brisbois’ classroom sometime in January. Although upsetting, by all accounts there was nothing wrong with the tank or with the class’s care of the fish, and the next sturgeon shouldn’t have any foreseeable issues. 

  “Sean did say that sometimes there’s fish, about one every year, in the program who just do not acclimate to the change and this year it was our fish,” Brisbois said.