Some beachgoers were in for a surprise this week when a bizarre looking prehistoric fish washed ashore in Colleton County along Edisto Beach at Edisto Beach State Park. It turned out to be an atlantic sturgeon.
The rare Atlantic sturgeon was found Thursday morning and posted in a Facebook group, with a request for identification, by Alden Newberry.
A sturgeon washing up on a beach is pretty rare because sturgeon are pretty rare.
“We see them maybe a few times a year at best,” said Mike Wagner of Shore Beach Service in Hilton Head, SC when one washed ashore there awhile back. “They’re not what people typically see washed up on the beach.”
They are quite rare indeed. To see this one washed ashore must have been a sight for Edisto beachgoers.
Nobody is sure how big it is because a good bit of it is buried in the sand, but from the photo, it appears to be longer than 4 feet in length.
Known to live to be over 60 years old, grow to 14 feet in length and weigh up to 800 pounds, the sturgeon is indeed a prehistoric species. They appear in the fossil record more than 200 million years ago and are commonly referred to as ‘a living fossil’.