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SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa (KCAU) — The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has been working to reintroduce what biologists call a living fossil: the paddlefish.  

“They appeared in the fossil record about 25 million years ago, so they’ve been around for a long, long time,” Iowa DNR fisheries biologist Mike Hawkins said.

For the first time in more than 100 years, the paddlefish will be swimming in Okoboji waters. 

“A native fish from the Missouri River Basin, that historically would have been able to get up to the lakes through the Little Sioux River, and the dams that were constructed at the turn of the century stopped that migration from occurring,” Hawkins said. “The population dwindled and the last record that we have of a paddlefish being caught in the Iowa Great Lakes is 1920.” 

But before the fish can make themselves at home, the Iowa DNR is making sure the paddlefish will safely adapt to their new waters.  

“We don’t know a lot about how these fish will react, how they will survive in the lakes, so one way that we can get at that is to tag these fish,” Hawkins said. “We tag them with a hydroacoustic tag, so it’s a tag that actually emits a sonic burst. That code is picked up by hydrophones in the lakes and therefore we can track the fish within the lakes.” 

With new tags to keep track of the fish, the DNR is excited to bring the fish back to the Iowa Great Lakes and hopefully keep them there. 

“We battle invasive species a lot,” Hawkins said. “We talk a lot about invasive species, invasive species management, so it’s really fun and gratifying to bring back a native species that would have been here historically.” 

“I’ve seen a lot of game fish in my time and enjoyed being around them, and this is just one more addition that will make the Iowa Great Lakes great,” local resident Greg Mohr said.

The Iowa DNR says that 1,900 paddlefish will be reintroduced to the Okoboji chain by the end of this week.

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