VIDALIA &045; There are exactly 1,679 more pallid sturgeon in the Mississippi River today than there were earlier this week.

That’s thanks to the work of Bobby Reed and others from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that released the five-month-old fish into the river at the Vidalia waterfront boat ramp Friday morning.

Reed, the sturgeon study coordinator for the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department, knows the exact number because he and members of his staff spent many hours tagging each one by hand so that the fish can be tracked later. The tags, small implants in the fish snouts that shine under an ultraviolet light, allow workers from the wildlife service to track the fish if they are caught later.

This release was part of a larger stocking program across Louisiana. Approximately 12,000 sturgeon will be released in the program, including large releases on the Red River and in the Atchafalaya Basin.

Sturgeon look like something out of a different era. Their flattened snouts, bony ridges and elongated tail give them the appearance of a prehistoric animal brought into modern times. The fish released Friday were five months old and about 12 inches long. The feisty fish swam out from the shallow water at the boat ramp into the main current of the Mississippi quickly, though some struggled against the waves crashing into the shore.

&uot;Their ridges are like body armor for protection against the rocks they hit in the river,&uot; Reed said.

The pallid sturgeon, one of seven sturgeon species native to North America, was put on the Federal Endangered Species list in 1990 due to concern about its diminishing numbers. The species was once plentiful throughout the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers but is now far more rare.

The program is designed to help replenish the sturgeon, whose numbers have declined rapidly in the past century.

Sturgeon were widely hunted for their roe. The roe, better known as caviar, is a highly prized delicacy.

But even more than hunting, it’s been a loss of their natural habitat that has hurt the fish. Extensive damming of the Missouri and Yellowstone (Montana) Rivers has destroyed many of the shallow backwaters the sturgeon inhabited. In the Mississippi, commercial fishing and increased pollution decimated the sturgeons’ numbers.

Further harming the sturgeon’s chances are the animal’s slow reproductive process. Females don’t become sexually mature until they’re 10-12 years old and males aren’t mature until at least age 5. That means the fish put in during Friday’s release won’t have any significant effect on the population for about a decade.

Some experts believe the sturgeon is actually doing better on the lower stretches of the Mississippi than was once believed. Adult sturgeon have been caught in study programs and many smaller fish have been caught successfully using trawling nets. But the sturgeon, which live on the river bottom, are notoriously difficult to catch.

&uot;I think there’s more here than we think,&uot; Ralph Laukhuff, the manager of corporate relations for Louisiana Hydroelectric, said. &uot;We just can’t catch them.&uot;

Laukhuff was station manager at the Old River Control Structure and Hydroelectric Plant in 1991 when a large group of pallid sturgeon was discovered there. Since then, he has been an ardent supporter of the breeding program.

Similar programs on the Missouri River have also had some success, though the breeding program is more difficult and more time-consuming than the one in Louisiana. The lower water temperature in breeding ponds there makes the fish grow more slowly.

&uot;It takes them two years to get fish to the same size it takes us five months to do,&uot; Reed said.

Sturgeon have reportedly been caught that weighed up to 80 pounds and measured as much as six feet in length. Reed says the largest fish he has personally seen weighed about 20 pounds and was almost three feet long.

The pallid sturgeon is found from Montana all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and the lower portions of their tributaries. It is also found in the lower reaches of the Atchafalaya River Basin.

Today there are 1,679 more pallid sturgeon in the Mississippi than there were a few days ago. A lot of people hope there will be far more than that in the next few decades.