are counting the sturgeon that spawn in this tributary of the York River. Moore's tribe has always known the sturgeon lurking on the bottom of the Pamunkey, but federal officials first became aware of the population in 2013.

Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is working with the Navy to determine how many sturgeon remain in the Pamunkey, as part of efforts to protect the broader endangered Chesapeake Bay population. The results of the study will help fill in a thus-far cloudy picture of a species that has been around since dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Chris Hager, whose company Chesapeake Scientific is helping NOAA and the Navy conduct the research, can get almost poetic on the importance of keeping such unique populations around in a "rapidly changing" world. Thefish that come back. Or it may take a very, very, very long time for them to come back and then be genetically selected to live in this place," Hager said.

"So this idea of maintaining biological diversity within a species and on the Earth in total, it gives us sustainability of the planet. It's like a buffer."


'Spiky baseball bat'

Four hundred years ago, the Atlantic sturgeon was plentiful, surprising English settlers in Jamestown.

Back home, sturgeon was so rare it was reserved for kings and queens -- a law that exists even today. But in Jamestown, it was the cornerstone of everyone's diet.

In 1609, Capt. John Smith described their abundance thusly: "We had more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog and man." The colony literally depended upon them. The