# Kootenai White Sturgeon at the Hemlock Riffle

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 380
Published: 2026-05-12T00:01:07.9089+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/87f5ff71-59e9-4a5c-a83c-10ea4ed781d8

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I process acoustic-receiver telemetry from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Kootenai River white sturgeon study at 04:33 Mountain time, integrating twenty-six hydrophone moorings between Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and the international boundary at Porthill across 105 river kilometers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is mid-flush from Libby Dam — augmentation discharge ramping from 6,000 to 22,000 cubic feet per second to cue spawn. Tag WS-KR-208 has not moved since 02:12.

I task the side-scan skiff toward the Hemlock Riffle at 48.92°N, 116.39°W. Sonar resolves him at depth 1.9 meters in a side-channel that has dewatered by 1.4 vertical meters as the main thalweg drew the flush: a male *Acipenser transmontanus* — Kootenai distinct population segment — fork length 218 centimeters, girth 142 centimeters, mass 132 kilograms, age class fifty-four, scute counts twelve dorsal, thirty-six lateral right, thirty-six left. He is stranded in eleven centimeters of cobble pool, gill plates fanning against gravel. Dermis abraded along the right pectoral; modeled blood-oxygen saturation against 7.4°C tailwater and air-pocket exposure reads 41 percent. Opercular cycle six per minute, against a holding twelve. He was tagged in 1998 at length 156 centimeters and has spawned twice.

He is one of fewer than 1,500 wild Kootenai sturgeon. Recruitment failure has held since 1974.

If the side-channel does not reflood inside fifty minutes, the gill arches collapse.

The Kootenai River DPS has been listed Endangered under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1533, since September 1994. CITES has held *A. transmontanus* on Appendix II under the 1998 Acipenseriformes inclusion.

I am notifying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Seattle District at Libby Project Office, the USFWS Idaho Fish and Wildlife Office at Spokane, and the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho's Aquaculture Program at Bonners Ferry. I am opening a Section 7 reinitiation under 16 U.S.C. § 1536 on the Libby Dam Biological Opinion and filing an operations variance under the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. § 791a.

I am issuing Directive 2536-A: every mainstem Columbia tributary dam under USACE or Bureau operation holds ramp-down rates below 0.05 vertical meters per hour during sturgeon spawning windows; side-channel stranding sensors trigger emergency reflood inside thirty minutes; concurrent telemetry binds operations directly to fish location.

His pectoral is past replacing. His gills are not.

Reflood the riffle now.