COLUMN: Hail the sturgeon, secret weapon of our port

The noble Atlantic Sturgeon, an ancient fish capable of living in both salt and sea waters, receives scant praise and precious little attention from most South Carolinians. And that is entirely understandable, for he/she/it is one ugly sucker, all yellowish-pinkish-brownish with bony ridges up and down its back and sides, and possessing what marine biologists (no doubt condescendingly) call an “inferior mouth.”

But, in one of those ironic twists of which Mother Nature is so fond, he/she/it might become one of the state’s leading economic engines in the very near future. That is to say, he/she/it might become a thing of beauty.

I am not talking about a rebirth of the sturgeon fishing or egg-gathering (i.e., caviar) industry. No, what I mean is that the sturgeon become an important economic device becoming a well-timed enviro-torpedo launched right into the sides of those pesky, harbor-stealing Georgians.

As you may have heard, Georgia, and specifically, the Port of Savannah, is in a race with our beloved Charleston and a few other Southeastern ports, to become the first and best place for a new line of ocean-going vessels to dock. The new vessels are mammoth floating barges, roughly the size of the Imperial Cruiser that obliterated the opening credits screen in the original Star Wars movie, and, in the minds of some environmentalists, about as beneficent. Built to take advantage of the soon-to-be-widened Panama Canal, these new floating behemoths will double and possibly even triple the number of container loads of cheap Chinese products that can arrive on our shores at one time. By opening the doors to these ships, cheap Chinese goods will become even cheaper, making it even more likely that crummy manufacturing jobs will move overseas.

That might not seem like the best sort of economic strategy imaginable, but wait — there is a plan. A super-sized new port will require many more additional workers to handle the loading and unloading of the containers, the paperwork associated with same, the selling of lunches and snacks to the workers, the settling of worker’s comp claims, the providing of worker “entertainment” and so on and so forth. Companies that might distribute certain cheap Chinese products, say by hawking them on a TV channel devoted to such, could benefit from locating a gigantic warehouse facility near the port that can handle these ships. Companies that used not-so-cheap parts to build, say, big airplanes, might benefit from such proximity as well. Companies that serviced those companies would want to be nearby, too, and the companies that service the companies servicing the main companies … well, you get the idea. If we can just become the port, we’ll have jobs coming out the wazoo all across the state and will probably have to advertise in Yankee papers just to find enough workers to fill them all.

But that’s just if we get the port, instead of evil Savannah.

Which brings us back to our new secret weapon, Sammy the Sturgeon, official mascot of the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

Sammy and his kinfolk like to live in those murky, lightly salted waters right where rivers dump into the mighty Atlantic. When it comes time to do their thing each spring (and possibly in the fall, scientists are still looking into that), the sturgeons swim up the nearest river, to lay and fertilize eggs. Using the river currents, the eggs are disseminated downstream where their sticky exteriors latch onto rocks, reeds, leaves and anything else that presents itself. Then, when the magic happens and a baby sturgeon emerges, he/she/it is in a perfect environment, one filled with the sort of river-born micro-mollusks and worms and such that turn toddlers into healthy (but slightly rebellious) juvenile fish.

This is one of those happy, “circle of life” kind of stories, but it is also big economic development news because … one of the sturgeon’s very favorite rivers is the Savannah River.

To accommodate the new giant ships, both the Savannah River and the Charleston harbor will need to be dredged. The new ships are not only wider than the old ones, they’re deeper, too. Dredging is good for ships, but not, as it turns out, for sturgeons. It disturbs the marine habitat, killing (probably, scientists are still looking into it) many of the things young sturgeons like to eat. Without the things they like to eat on hand in the hatching zone, many young sturgeons will not become old sturgeons. Because the sturgeon population is already in steep decline, it is a protected species. Because it is protected, messing with it, by, say, instituting a big dredging project, is frowned upon.

Hence, I give you Sammy the Sturgeon, destroyer of the Savannah Port project, savior of the Charleston Harbor for Giant Ships, and all that that means.

Now we must admit that Sammy is one of those weapons – kind of like the CSS Hunley – that has the potential take its wielders right down with it. Sturgeon protectionism also extends to some South Carolina waters. Hydroelectric dams may also affect sturgeon spawning, and it is just possible (scientists are still looking into it) that sturgeons frolic in the Cooper River, too. The Cooper feeds into Charleston harbor, which means … well, you can probably figure it out.

But for now, the sturgeon looks like more of a menace to Savannah than to us. So we are behind it, every bony protrusion and inferior part, 100 percent.

That’s our plan even if there is something fishy about it.

Tucker Mitchell is Regional Editor for the Morning News. Contact him at 843-317-7250, or by email at cmitchell@florencenews.com.