The short-nosed sturgeon has a brown, tan or bluish-black body and a whitish belly. It has no scales, but five rows of bony plates, called scutes, cover its head and body: one along the back,
one along either side and two along the belly. It grows very slowly, eventually reaching about 4.5 feet in length and weighing 50 pounds. It has a short, broad snout with a rounded tip, with four
sensory barbels on the underside of its snout. Its mouth is soft and toothless. Because of the bony plates covering its body, the short-nosed sturgeon has few natural predators. Human activities
such as pollution, historic overfishing and damming of rivers threaten sturgeons. Sturgeons are anadromous, meaning they live in the ocean and spawn in freshwater rivers. Spawning occurs
from February to April in the fast-flowing freshwater river the fish was born in. Females lay anywhere from 27,000 to 208,000 eggs over an area with a rocky bottom. Once hatched, the
tadpole-like larvae remain in sheltered areas for about two weeks before being slowly carried downstream to merge with adults. By the time they are just an inch long, juveniles begin to
resemble and act like adults.
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The shortnose sturgeon has a brown, tan or bluish-black body and a whitish belly. It has no scales, but five rows of bony plates, called scutes, cover its head and body: one along the back, one along either side and two along the belly. It grows very slowly, eventually reaching about 4.5 feet in length and weighing 50 pounds. It has a short, broad snout with a rounded tip, with four sensory barbels on the underside of its snout. Its mouth is soft and toothless.