Stumbled onto this holiday and thought this was an interesting animal to make a post about.  I don’t touch on fish outside of sharks very often, so I jumped at the chance for a new critter.  So, what is an American paddlefish?

First, it is the last living species of paddlefish after the Chinese paddlefish was officially declared extinct in 2022.  The factors that led to the latter’s extinction is what the former now faces.  They have been overfished for caviar and suffer from habitat destruction.  Yes, they are a target of sports fishing, but that is highly regulated and only allowed in areas with high populations that can safely support the activity.  Still, the global demand for the caviar has creating a poaching issue.  Finally, American paddlefish lose much of their food source to zebra mussels, which is an invasive species.  All of this makes them listed as vulnerable and is why there is a really big conservation and reintroduction program in the USA.

The American paddlefish is a unique species that is found in freshwater.  They eat by swimming around with their mouths open to filter out plankton.  Inside their gills are structures called gill rakers that catch the food for swallowing.  From the pictures below, you will see that they have long ‘noses’ called a rostrum, which makes them oddly shark-like in appearance. They also have cartilage skeletons instead of bone, but they are more closely related to sturgeons than sharks.  As for the rostrum, it isn’t a nose, but part of their skull.

Here are some other facts:

• They sexually mature later in life with females not spawning anywhere from 7 to 18 years old.
• Hatchlings are not born with the rostrum fully developed.  It grows over time.
• They average 40 pounds, but some have been found at 200 pounds.
• It’s range is mostly the Mississippi, but it was once found throughout the Great Lakes.
• They can also be found in Montana.
• Paddlefish ancestors lived here about 125 million years ago.
• The rostrum has electroreceptors on the tip to help them find plankton.

Time for pictures and videos, so people get a good idea of what they look like.