Data Collection to Determine Potential Exposure and Injuries of Threatened Gulf Sturgeon in Eight River Systems from Louisiana to Florida and Coastal Gulf of Mexico Waters from September 2010 to May 2011

This report contains Gulf sturgeon data and provides additional context for the posted dataset, including information about the collection, analysis, and organization of the data. Characteristics of this dataset include the following: This dataset provides information related to capturing, measuring, and tagging Gulf sturgeon migrating in rivers that drain into the northern Gulf of Mexico, tracking tagged Gulf sturgeon in the northern Gulf of Mexico, and recapturing and measuring Gulf sturgeon when they returned upstream. This dataset includes data collected cooperatively with the Trustees. Before posting, extensive work was done independently by BP contractors to verify some aspects of the posted data (e.g., positional coordinates and field data). The focus of this data posting is observational data that were collected under the work plan titled Pre-Assessment Plan for the Collection of Data to Determine Potential Exposure and Injuries of Threatened Gulf Sturgeon. Observations were made between September 27, 2010 and May 18, 2011, at eight rivers that drain into the northern Gulf of Mexico extending from the Pearl River, located along the Louisiana-Mississippi border, eastward to the Suwannee River, located in northcentral Florida. (An additional river identified in the work plan, the Ochlockonee in the panhandle of Florida, was not sampled due to the low likelihood of capturing Gulf sturgeon within the river.) The data were cooperatively collected by representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) as the lead Trustee, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and BP. This dataset includes data associated with field observations including sampling date, sampling location information, water physicochemical data, fish morphometric and tagging data, and Gulf sturgeon telemetry data from the telemetry receiver stations in the northern Gulf of Mexico.