Abstract：Unusually deep water due to dam construction has the potential to negatively effect endangered sturgeons, which lack a physiological mechanism to inflate their swimbladder and may be unable to remain buoyant under high pressure at depth. In a previous study, some juvenile sturgeons released in a deep (>100 m) reservoir lost buoyancy and stayed nearly motionless on the bottom. However, it is not clear whether this behavior represents a negative effect of the dam, because natural sturgeon swimming behavior is unknown. In this study, we attached multi-sensor data loggers to nine wild adult Chinese sturgeons Acipenser sinensis in an unimpounded reach of the Yangtze River, China.

Yuuki Watanabe, Qiwei Wei*, Hao Du, Luoxin Li, Nobuyuki Miyazaki. Swimming behavior of Chinese sturgeon in natural habitat as compared to that in a deep reservoir: preliminary evidence for anthropogenic impacts. Environmental Biology of Fishes. 2013. 96(1):123-130.