Is there an ichthyologist in the house?

June 2, 2008 1:17 PM

Please help me identify this fish that I found in NYC along the Hudson River.

Here's a couple of shots I took with various feet included for a sense of scale. Unfortunately my cell camera quality is dooky. I found this specimen while biking along the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway at around 116th St. It was in the grassy area between the river and the bike path.

posted by funkiwan to pets & animals (5 comments total)

I'm no biologist, but it looks like a Shortnose Sturgeon.
posted by pokeedog at 1:32 PM on June 2, 2008

Woah, interesting find. Some kind of sturgeon would be my first guess. Another picture here. Looks like someone caught it and then left it? Weird. Not that I would eat anything caught in the water next to NYC, but still wasteful.
posted by otolith at 1:33 PM on June 2, 2008

I believe that's a sturgeon. It's actually featured on all the signs put in place by the Hudson River Estuary Program.
posted by nekton at 1:34 PM on June 2, 2008

Related: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/dot-earth-sturgeon-on-hudson/

Same fish?
posted by blaneyphoto at 3:26 PM on June 2, 2008

While indeed you all gave correct answers -- and quickly, too -- best has to go to blaneyphoto's answer for providing a link to the specific instance of the fish in question! Here's the full article link.

For those who don't want to click through, it's a blog posting in the NYTimes by a photographer who saw the same fish I did on the bike path. Apparently, it's an Atlantic sturgeon, though it looks a bit more like a Shortnose to me.
posted by funkiwan at 8:15 PM on June 2, 2008