than 10.

Hager and other researchers described the excitement that comes with catching sturgeon that can reach 14 feet long and weigh 800 pounds. The fish is at first very still, giving researchers a short window in which to get it on a Navy stretcher originally designed to move injured sailors through a ship's manholes. Strapped onto the stretcher, the sturgeon is safely kept in the water while researchers tag it and collect data.

If researchers are too slow, the fish comes to life, flipping over onto its stomach as it realizes, "Hey, I'm being abducted by aliens," Hager said. The fish's bony scales can snag and scrape, leaving the researchers with an array of small injuries.

"It's like being beat with a really large, spiky baseball bat," said Carter Watterson,a marine fisheries biologist with the Navy, later joking: "Our favorite one was the one that caught Chris upside the face with the tail."

NOAA biologists Jason Kahn and Jordan Carduner

Jason Kahn, a biologist with NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, lost a toenail last year. He now wears closed-toed shoes and puts his life jacket on inside out, to ensure an unruly fish doesn't snag the straps.

So far this year, researchers have caught 42 sturgeon, three of which were recaptures. They have a few weeks left in the spawning season, after which they hope to calculate a good estimate of the population's total size.

Until then, Kahn and his colleagues will spend most of their days bringing up empty nets. This is the third season they have spent 10 weeks