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It's April, and Wisconsin's Wolf River is teeming with sturgeons.
時值4月，威斯康辛州的狼河中有許多鱘魚。
The fish prowl the rocks near the banks, their fins breaching the water in the frothing spillway of Shawano Dam, which lies between a paper mill on one side of the river and the town of Shawano's Sturgeon Park, a tiered greenway at the river's edge.
這些魚在河岸附近的巖石周圍逡巡游動，魚鰭在白沫翻騰的肖瓦諾水壩溢洪道露出水面，這座水壩橫瓦在狼河上，一側是造紙廠，另一側是肖瓦諾鎮的鱘魚公園，那是河邊一條階梯式綠色廊道。
Since the barrier's construction in 1892, this has marked the farthest point up the river where the sturgeons can swim.
自1892年建造這座水壩以來，這里就成為鱘魚在狼河逆流而上時可游到的最遠地點。
A crowd is beginning to gather along the banks to watch this annual rite of spring, in which thousands of sturgeons swim from Lake Winnebago, 125 miles downstream, to spawn.
人群開始沿著河岸聚集，準備觀看這場一年一度的春季儀式，數以千計的鱘魚會從下游200公里遠的溫尼巴哥湖游上來產卵。
These fish are a small number of the roughly 40,000 adult sturgeons in the Lake Winnebago system.
溫尼巴哥湖系約有4萬只成年鱘魚，狼河里的鱘魚只是其中一小部分。
Wisconsin's statewide lake sturgeon population is one of the healthiest on the planet.
威斯康辛州全境的湖鱘族群是地球上最健康的鱘魚族群之一。
Theirs is a comeback story that sturgeon advocates are seeking to emulate around the world.
當地的鱘魚族群代表一則成功的復育故事，鱘魚保護人士希望能在世界各地仿效。
Sturgeons were once so abundant in North American rivers that, according to Indigenous lore, you could walk across the water on the fish's backs.
鱘魚曾經大量分布于北美洲的河川，根據原住民的傳說，當時的人可以踩在鱘魚背上過河。
Lake sturgeons -- the fish that are spawning below Shawano Dam and top out around seven feet -- once ranged from the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay south to the Mississippi watershed, but by the 1970s they had been largely wiped out of many of their native rivers.
至于如今在肖瓦諾水壩下游處產卵的湖鱘，最多可生長到7英尺長，分布范圍原本是從北美五大湖和哈得遜灣往南延伸至密西西比河流域，但到了20世紀70年代，已經在許多原生河流中消失殆盡。
In Wisconsin, sturgeon populations had plunged years earlier, but foresighted management averted disaster.
威斯康辛州的鱘魚數量曾在多年前驟然下降，但在政府富有遠見的管理政策下，成功地避免了災難的發生。
In 1915, the state banned all fishing for lake sturgeons for a time, then carefully tinkered with catch and size requirements that are still in place.
1915年，威斯康辛州暫時禁止所有捕撈湖鱘的活動，隨后審慎地調整捕獲量和體型大小的相關規定，一直沿用至今。
Those catch limits are set by Margaret Stadig, the state's so-called sturgeon general -- a moniker that tends to stick to all sturgeon bosses.
制定捕撈限制的是瑪格麗特·史塔蒂格，她在威斯康辛州有“鱘魚總長”之稱，從事鱘魚相關工作的領導者往往被冠上這個稱號。
Stadig is a fisheries biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, charged with overseeing the health of the Lake Winnebago population.
史塔蒂格是威斯康辛州自然資源部的漁業生物學家，負責監督溫尼巴哥湖族群的健康狀況。
She also collaborates with the federal government on a breeding program meant to restore lake sturgeon numbers across their former range.
她也與聯邦政府合作一項繁殖計劃，目的是恢復湖鱘在原生范圍內的數量。
This is her first spawning season (her predecessor pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of theft of caviar), and as she stands along the Wolf River watching the sturgeons prepare to spawn, she points to a female moving slowly along the rocks, bloated with eggs.
這是她第一次遇到產卵季，她站在狼河邊觀察鱘魚準備產卵時，指著一條沿著巖石緩慢游動、腹中懷著卵的雌魚。
"She looks like a Goodyear blimp," Stadig says, noting that the males are thinner and sleeker, "more like torpedoes."
史塔蒂格說：“它看起來像一艘飛船。”她注意到雄魚較瘦，身體線條也較流暢，“更像是魚雷”。
They're more active too, jumping out of the water from time to time, their bodies vibrating like plucked guitar strings.
雄魚活動力也比較旺盛，不時跳出水面來，像撥動的吉他弦一樣振動著身體。
When a female sturgeon is ready to spawn, a group of males surrounds her, thumping her abdomen with their tails so vigorously that an onlooker perched on the riverbank can feel the rocks shake, until she extrudes her eggs -- thousands at a time.
雌性鱘魚準備產卵時，會有一群雄魚圍繞著，用尾巴用力敲打其腹部直到產卵為止，連河岸上的旁觀者都能感覺到巖石晃動，而雌魚一次能產下成千上萬顆卵。
The eggs and milt -- fish sperm -- meet and settle on the rocks or gravel at the bottom of the river, hatching as larvae a week later to ride the spring runoff back down the river.
魚卵和魚精液接觸并落在河底的巖石或礫石上，一周后孵化為幼魚，順著春季徑流往下游而去。
"They vibrate when they spawn," Stadig says, referring to what the locals call "sturgeon thunder."
史塔蒂格說：“它們產卵時會振動。”當地人將這種現象稱為“鱘雷”。
Once the thunder begins, Stadig's team -- which is here to count and characterize the fish -- also gets busy, netting the sturgeons and laying them on a tarp.
一旦鱘雷發生，史塔蒂格的團隊就會忙碌起來，開始捕捉鱘魚，放在帆布上，這個團隊現在就待在河邊計算鱘魚的數量，并記錄它們的特征。
One team member holds a fish's head, another the tail, while a third scans for telemetric tags that indicate whether the fish has been caught before.
一名隊員抓住鱘魚的頭部，另一名抓住尾部，還有一名隊員掃描魚的身上是否有遙測標記，以確認這條魚是否先前被捕捉過。
Stadig will set the next year's fishing harvest caps using an algorithm based on numbers of tagged and untagged fish.
史塔蒂格會依據已標記和未標記的鱘魚數量，利用演算法來制定隔年的捕撈上限。
Thanks to these quotas, the Wolf River sturgeons are now healthy enough to sustain their own numbers.
在這樣的限額下，狼河鱘魚族群如今十分健康，足以自行維持數量。
Federal officials hope to build on that success by breeding Wolf River sturgeons to restock rivers in other states.
聯邦官員希望以這里的成功為基礎，透過繁殖狼河鱘魚來補充其他州河流的族群數量。
