DNR Finds Chessie? Nope. But It Is a Monster Sturgeon

Maryland Department of Natural Resources surveyors thought they might have found Chessie. But is turns out they caught the largest female sturgeon in the survey’s history.

She is not the mystical Chesapeake Bay sea monster, but she is rare.

This fall, the Atlantic sturgeon gillnetting survey on Marshyhope Creek, a tributary of the Nanticoke River on the Delmarva Peninsula, caught the sturgeon. She measured just under 7 feet 10 inches and weighed more than 200 pounds. Biologists tagged her with a passive integrated transponder tag, an acoustic transmitter, and an external T-bar tag.

Chessie, as she has been nicknamed, was then returned to the water, where she can be tracked as she moves around the Chesapeake Bay and up and down the coast.

The Chesapeake Bay sturgeon population is listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. DNR’s tagging work allows for the collection of data that provides information on sturgeon movements throughout the Bay and supports research efforts in other systems along the Atlantic seaboard.