The finds lead Michael C. Odom, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, to conclude that the sturgeon, against long odds, has maintained a small breeding population in the lower James.

"There may yet be a future for the sturgeon here in Virginia," Odom said.

Dr. Jack Musick, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science ecologist, doesn't buy it. A few sturgeons might swim to Virginia from other states, and a few might even spawn here at times. But in Musick's opinion the fish is "functionally extirpated"—extinct—in the state.

"It's been 100 years [since the population crashed from overfishing], and they have not been able to rebound," Musick said.

The James is cleaner now than it was 40 years ago, and the sturgeon has been legally protected for 25 years. But the fish is so far gone those improvements haven't helped, Musick said.

Legendary Fish

The sturgeon is a fish of legend. A 14-footer, the apparent record, was caught off the Canadian coast in the 1960s. In Virginia, they were once so abundant they were considered hazards to navigation. Young Indians reportedly rode them as a test of manhood. Capt. John Smith wrote that the Jamestown settlers, heavily dependent on sturgeons for food, would club them in the shallows.

"There are reports of these things jumping into people's boats," Odom said. "You can imagine, if you are in a small boat and a 600, 800-pound fish jumps in your boat, you've got a serious problem."

The sturgeon is a strange-looking creature, with bony plates on its side and back, and skin instead of scales. It has a shovel-shaped head and snout that helps it root about on river bottoms, where it feeds on worms, insects and crustaceans. It's olive brown.

Since Colonial times, sturgeons were heavily fished for their meat and their eggs, which were sold as caviar. Landings in the Chesapeake Bay region peaked in 1890 at 725,000 pounds. The population crashed, and by 1920 the haul was only 22,800 pounds. Today the sturgeon is one of the rarest fish in the bay.

Like a real-life Loch Ness monster, however, the sturgeon keeps surfacing, literally. Sturgeons like to leap, and over the years reports piled up of boaters witnessing giant fish erupting from the water. Reports also drifted in of sturgeons getting caught in watermen's nets.

To test the fish-net reports, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offered a reward—$100 at first, then $50—to fishermen who caught and held a live sturgeon until a biologist could inspect it and take some tissue for genetic tests. Game authorities approved the deal.

The results were astounding. From March 1997 to February 1998, fishermen caught more than 300 sturgeons, most of them less than three feet long. The biggest approached six feet. Most were caught in the James below the Chickahominy River. A few were caught in the Rappahannock and the York rivers.

The catches raised a question: Did those fish swim to Virginia from other states, where sturgeon are slightly more common, or were they bred-and-born Virginians?

It was more than an academic question. Some scientists are considering stocking the bay with sturgeons from other states. But if the fish were already breeding, some say, proper management might trigger a natural—albeit lengthy—comeback.

Atlantic sturgeons swim up and down the East Coast. In spring, big ones migrate into freshwater rivers to spawn. Scientists believe young sturgeons remain about a year in the river of their birth. Many of the sturgeons that the fishermen caught were youngsters.

"Based on that alone, we are pretty sure we have a remnant population" of sturgeons breeding in the James, Odom said.

DNA tests, performed to prove or disprove that the fish are genetically unique to Virginia, were inconclusive, Odom said.

VIMS' Musick said he was surprised how many fish the watermen caught. But he doesn't see evidence the fish are consistently breeding here. For proof, he wants to see sturgeons less than a year old—meaning less than a foot long. Bigger ones could swim to Virginia. Only one fish caught by the watermen was that small.

Virginia was once home to two species of sturgeon. The other, a smaller fish, is the shortnose sturgeon. It's on the federal endangered-species list. The shortnose hadn't been reported in Virginia for years. It's officially listed as extinct in the state.

One of the fish the watermen caught was a shortnose sturgeon, in the mouth of the Rappahannock.

"We have no idea where that fish came from," Odom said.

The Atlantic sturgeon is listed as extremely rare, but not extinct, in Virginia.

In 1999, Odom and other federal scientists took to the James with sonar and gill nets to try to catch a big Atlantic sturgeon. They never got an encouraging sonar signal. But Odom saw a sturgeon jump from the water below Weyanoke in Charles City County. He estimated its length at six feet.

Fewer than a half-dozen dead sturgeons, possibly hit by boats, have washed up on the banks of the James in recent years, including an eight-footer near Scotland Wharf in Surry County in 1994. Most recently, one measuring seven feet, 10 inches turned up in October in Charles City County, just south of Odom's office at the Harrison Lake Fish Hatchery.

Authorities occasionally charge watermen with illegally catching and selling Atlantic sturgeon. One count carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Sturgeons have been around for 70 million years, which means they survived the extinction that took the dinosaurs. One can live 60 years.

Females don't become sexually mature until they are about 20, however, and then they might not spawn but once every six years or so. That methodical reproduction spelled disaster when fishermen sliced up every big female they could find a century ago to get their eggs.

"The whole stock was clear-cut in about 10 to 12 years," Musick said.

People who know rivers speak of the sturgeon with awe.

Jack Travelstead is chief of fisheries for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. He's not a fish-tale kind of guy. As a graduate student in the late 1970s, he was fishing on the Pamunkey River at dusk when a huge creature, close enough to touch, rolled up through the water beside his boat.

"It was every bit of 12 feet long," Travelstead said.

It took a second for Travelstead to realize the animal was a sturgeon. "It's actually a little scary when you see something that looks like a dinosaur come out of the water."

And yet, he and many others would like to see more of the big fish.