‘Very rare’ endangered fish found swimming in Kansas River. See the ‘awesome’ find

Wildlife biologists were sampling the Kansas River for invasive carp species when they “found something much more rare,” officials said.

The rare fish was identified as a pallid sturgeon, according to an April 28 Facebook post from the Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks.

Pallid sturgeons are listed as endangered federally and in the state of Kansas.

This particular fish was tagged, signifying it was part of a class of pallid sturgeons propagated for restoration and marked in the Missouri River in 2011, conservation officials said.

“Although conservation efforts have contributed to slightly improved populations within the Mississippi River basin, the Endangered Pallid Sturgeon has remained quite uncommon in the Kansas River, which makes this an awesome, and very rare find,” authorities said.

If you think you have spotted a rare pallid sturgeon before, you may have confused it with “the much more common shovelnose sturgeon, which is readily found in the Kansas River.”

To tell pallid sturgeons and shovelnose sturgeons apart, you look at the barbel position on the underside of their snouts, according to the post.

The inner barbells on pallids are thinner and shorter than the outer barbells, officials said, while the inner barbells on shovelnoses are similar in thickness and length to the outer two barbells.

Mature pallid sturgeons can measure about 72 inches long, while the longest shovelnose sturgeons are about 30 inches long.

This story was originally published May 1, 2023 at 10:06 AM with the headline "‘Very rare’ endangered fish found swimming in Kansas River. See the ‘awesome’ find."