Fishery Biologist Adam Kowalski initiated requests for 2006 lake sturgeon tagging data from biologist throughout the Great Lakes, in August, as the final phase in a grant funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust.

The grant was awarded in 2004 to construct and maintain a database to house tag information such as tag type, number, location, and tagger contact information. The database has been operational for a year now and contains more than 11,000 passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags and more than 100 tag sequences for external tags.

With the completion of this final phase all grant requirements will have been met and a final report submitted by December 2006. 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 http://www.glfc.org/sturgeontag/index.htm