Ontonagon River streamside rearing trailer parentage analysis

Lake sturgeon is a species of management concern throughout the Great Lakes basin. Breeding populations of lake sturgeon in Lake Superior exhibit a high degree of spatial genetic structure, and have the highest level of genetic differentiation relative to the rest of the Great Lakes. Genetic guidelines for the stocking of lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes are available for sturgeon population restoration. Fishery agencies involved with rearing and stocking lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes follow specific guidelines for number of parents used, mating ratios, rearing approaches, size targets, tagging, and stocking numbers. The guidelines provide a target and potential for success, however inevitably other factors are involved at each stage from egg collection, hatch, fish survival, size at tagging, and stocking survival that influence adherence to recommended guidelines. Genetic techniques can provide insight into our ability to maintain the parental genetic diversity from egg collection and fertilization through to stocking of fish. This information is valuable for genetic evaluation of our egg collection, fertilization, and rearing practices. This project will use genomic DNA to determine the parentage of individual lake sturgeon reared at the Ontonagon River streamside rearing trailer. This is a notice of intent to award a single source cooperative agreement to West Virginia University without competition under justification 505DM 2.14.B.4. Competition for the award is not practical as the genomics lab at West Virginia University already has all baseline genetic data for Great Lakes lake sturgeon and geneticists have analyzed cohort genetic diversity in other Lake Superior populations making the proposed analysis more economical and efficient.