On July 31, I watched from the Turners Falls bridge as a teen stood over an isolated pool in an emptied riverbed, 30 feet from FirstLight’s stoppered dam. He clutched a bent rod with something on his line. I had an idea what it might be. The Recorder had just published a story about a fossil collector who met up with a federally endangered shortnose sturgeon here just eight days earlier, stranded in a different pool for unknown days or weeks [“Shortnose sturgeon found at dam,” July 31].

Each July, FirstLight shuts off the river at the dam, further starving an impoverished riverbed. Closing bascule gate No. 1 diverts all flow to their power canal, while simultaneously corralling and refilling the vast 20-mile stretch of the Connecticut River FirstLight refers to as their “lower reservoir.” That suctioned stretch is endlessly refilled to satisfy the giant water appetite of the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station.

The dam shut down on July 12 this year. Acres of dewatered bed and isolated pools were left baking in the summer sun. A dozen feet in front of the dam, a mandated thin wash of 120 cfs (cubic feet per second) of canal water curled back into the starved bed below bascule No. 1. It was required decades back as an escape route for dam-stranded sturgeon.

“Hey!” I bellowed at the kid, “Is that a sturgeon?” He reluctantly signaled yes. I warned of consequences and told him to leave. Lacking binoculars, I was 90% sure it was another Connecticut River shortnose, federally endangered since 1967.

It’s illegal to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct” toward them. Civil and/or legal penalties begin at $1,000. Regardless, a rescue was required.

Recorder reporter Chris Larabee’s story referred to USGS Conte Lab sturgeon researcher Micah Kieffer’s observing that there was no evidence FirstLight’s dam caused that first sturgeon’s entrapment. He’d offered theories including storms and high July flows, plus an idea that potentially new, upriver population movements precipitated its predicament.

Now, just eight days later, another member of a 100 million-year-old species — perhaps just one more lacking natural wisdom and the due diligence of operators controlling the dam from Northfield Mountain, had gotten itself cooped up again.

As theories go, I’d learned much from many hours spent with retired federal sturgeon expert Boyd Kynard of Amherst. His decades as principal investigator for Connecticut River shortnose sturgeon research at Conte Lab ultimately led to his lead authorship of “Life History and Behaviour of the Connecticut River shortnose and other sturgeons,” published by the World Sturgeon Society. Micah Kieffer, his longtime assistant, is cited as co-author on many chapters.

I’d spent several years on spring mornings with Dr. Kynard, presenting an environmental program centered on this dewatered stretch. In 2013, I authored the idea and name for Shortnose Stout, brewed several years back by The People’s Pint. On its label, I highlighted Kynard’s website and the lack of sustaining flows causing repeat sturgeon reproductive failures here.

I left the bridge and ran across to the Discovery Center to try and reach authorities. No luck. When I ran back ,the kid was gone. But two others were nearby. I warned them off, then jumped on my bicycle, heading for the USGS Conte Lab two miles away. I leaned on the buzzer, asking for Micah Kieffer or the lab’s science team manager, Brett Towler. Brett was in his office. He pulled up a satellite zoom and I pointed out the stranding pool. I said I’d head back there while he found Micah and called Firstlight.

But a storm loomed. So, when a Greenfield bus appeared, I jumped on. At home, I grabbed binoculars and hopped in the car. But when I ran out on the riverbed, thunder stopped me. Walking back to the bridge I found FirstLight’s Steve Leach. “Yup, it’s a sturgeon.” We went over for a look. Barring weather, they’d do a rescue. “It should take maybe an hour,” he said. It began to pour.

Heading home, I still had no documenting photos. A new stranding would be important for agency records, and the public should be aware. Though soggy, I stopped by the Recorder and told photographer Paul Franz a sturgeon rescue should be happening, in maybe an hour.

After changing at home, I thought, “I’d like to see it freed.” This time I found Franz on the bridge. “Did you see the sturgeon?” I asked. “Couldn’t find it.” “Come on, I’ll show you.” The storm had ended. The fish swam slowly in its murky prison. Paul took pictures. At around 6:30 p.m. it became clear there’d be no evening rescue.

At 7:35 a.m. the next morning, I took photos as Micah Kieffer and Steve Leach netted the fish. Kieffer tagged it, then Leach walked it down to a narrow lower pool, toward a thin flow washing into the emptied bed off the canal.

As to theories regarding this stranding, I’ll go with a principle first related to me by Boyd Kynard. Known as Occam’s razor, it holds that the simplest explanation is the one most likely to prove true. An endangered fish was swimming in its home river here. Then, the river flow was abruptly cut, leaving no flow and no escape toward a tiny pool below a shuttered dam.

No $1,000 fines should be levied on these de-rivered sturgeon. “Occam” finds them not responsible.

Karl Meyer lives in Greenfield. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.