St. Mary’s College of Maryland Receives $500k for Sturgeon Research

ST. MARY’S CITY, Md. — A marine scientist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland has received more than $500,000 in NASA funding to expand a predictive tool designed to help protect the endangered Atlantic sturgeon by forecasting where the fish are most likely to be found.

Matthew Breece, an assistant professor of marine science, was awarded a three-year subaward through NASA’s Biodiversity and Ecological Conservation program. The funding will support the expansion of the Atlantic Sturgeon Occurrence Model, a real-time forecasting system originally developed in Delaware that predicts sturgeon presence in rivers and coastal waters.

The model uses daily environmental data — including water depth, temperature and satellite-derived sea surface temperature — to generate forecasts similar to weather predictions. Those forecasts can be accessed by users such as commercial watermen and recreational boaters, allowing them to anticipate where sturgeon are likely to be and adjust their activities to avoid accidental encounters.

“The goal is to give people who are working or recreating on the water actionable information,” Breece said. “If you know sturgeon are likely to be present in a certain area, you can make decisions that reduce the risk of interaction.”

With the new funding, researchers will broaden the model’s geographic reach by incorporating tracking data from collaborators in Delaware, New York and South Carolina. Additional satellite observations will also be integrated, improving the model’s accuracy across a larger portion of the Mid-Atlantic region.

Atlantic sturgeon are long-lived, slow-maturing fish that migrate from ocean waters into rivers to spawn. Once abundant along the U.S. East Coast, their populations have declined sharply over the past century.

According to NOAA Fisheries, the species faces multiple threats, including accidental capture in fishing gear, vessel strikes, habitat degradation from pollution and coastal development, and dams that block access to historic spawning grounds. Several distinct population segments of Atlantic sturgeon are listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Researchers say tools like the occurrence model can play a key role in conservation by reducing human-caused harm while allowing maritime activities to continue.

By expanding the system’s coverage and precision, Breece said, the project aims to provide a practical bridge between satellite science, fisheries management and on-the-water decision-making — ultimately improving the odds of survival for one of the Atlantic coast’s most imperiled fish species.

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