During the month of October, Fishery Biologist Adam Kowalski started updating the Great Lake Sturgeon Tag Identification Database. Development of the database was funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust in 2004 to  house tag information such as tag type, tag number, tag location, and tagger contact information.

The database has been operational for over two years now and contains information on over 13,000 passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags and over 100 tag sequences for external tags. Kowalski will continue to maintain and update the database by requesting and entering tagging information annually.

Feedback to Kowalski has been positive and the database seems to be getting a lot of use by biologists looking up information for tagged lake sturgeon they have captured. The database is housed at the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s web site and can be viewed at the following web address http://www.glfc.org/sturgeontag/index.htm.