Dragon boat on the James. Credit: VisitRichmondVA.com/Sports Backers

If there’s one thing Richmond’s outdoors lovers are good at, it’s voting in online contests. We all proved that back in 2012 when we took Outside Magazine by storm, dominating the voting for its “Best River Town Ever” designation and landing on the cover of the October issue. That was pretty sweet.

Now it’s time to get those voting fingers out again because USA Today and some website called 10best.com are holding a contest to anoint the “Best American Riverfront.” There are 20 nominees, and among them are three cities that Richmond vanquished in the Outside Magazine voting — Hood River, Ore.; Nashville; and Milwaukee.

According to the 10Best contest website: We took into consideration urban planning and green space, public access, sheer beauty, popularity, and if special events can be or are held there. This was a very tough contest for choosing nominees, according to our expert panel.

You can vote every day until October 20 at noon, and so far Wilmington, N.C. leads the voting, followed by Spokane, Wash.; Dubuque, Iowa; Louisville, and fellow former Outside Mag honoree Chattanooga, Tenn.

Okay, Richmond, your reputation as a world class online voting region is at stake. Also, while I haven’t been to many of the other cities on the list, I can definitively say that our riverfront is cooler than all of the other ones nominated — put together.

So, let’s do this! Click here to vote.

Ralph White…

In that brief, wordless pause your mind perhaps conjured up an image or formed some other association. If you work or play much in the Richmond outdoors you probably know not only the name but can picture the man. The short, twinkle-eyed park ranger walking a riverside trail in his mauve button-down shirt, shorts, hiking boots and socks to his knees.

If you are younger than 15, your “Ralph White” is probably a snake charmer and a storyteller. He comes to you as translator – as though he has learned to speak “rock” or speak “reptile,” and would very much like for you to receive the message of those quiet, almost forgotten languages. If you are a city of Richmond administrator, your “Ralph White” may be a troublesome rule breaker who once made you work harder and think harder about the often ridiculous nature of your own rules.

If you owe your association to reporters of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, your “Ralph White” is a complex character wearing either halo and wings or horns and a tail, alternating in accordance with the schizophrenic weather of public opinion. In fact, if you are a well-read Richmonder, you may even have mental associations in which your “Ralph White” wears a green peace halo and the red horns of civic malpractice all in the same instance. Such is the inevitable characterization of a nature lover living and working in a modern, progressive city.        

The Ralph White I met for the first time in 2004 was a bright-eyed and earnest man whose life story is very much dominated by the intimate bond he has formed with the river James. A healthy, sustaining relationship that has before, and will forever, instruct his behavior and politics.

Fortunately for us, this special relationship between Ralph and James is not an exclusive one. He wants other Richmonders to know and appreciate the age and wisdom that flows through our little town each day.  He thinks maintaining our own healthy relationship and bond with this pre-historic flow of water will enrich our lives. Crazy, right? Hell no. Pure, quiet truth.

I hadn’t known him long before the flesh and blood Ralph White, always more interesting than anything you could read or hear about him, interrupted one of his own animated nature translations to proclaim “Scott, here’s what I recommend you do.”  I have never found Ralph’s voice to be overexcited or melodramatic, and yet he still seems intensely interested in his subject and communicates his thoughts with precise enunciation. A classic NPR voice (I can’t believe they haven’t snatched him out of retirement yet!).  It was in his best Americanized Elizabethan voice that Ralph pronounced, “It would serve you well, my friend, to float the river beneath the uncommon light of a harvest moon.”

Aaaah! Nice idea, me thinks. Floating gently in a canoe as the soft blue rebound of yesterday’s light silvers the James. Should be great! I’ll grab some beer, pack a cooler, push the kids and the wife out of the house…we’ll all have a sweet nighttime boat ride.

“No. no.  Here is the best way.” Ralph advised, a bit more earnestly.  “I recommend that you don a life jacket and float your body limply at the thin interface of air and water. Immerse yourself in both mediums simultaneously.”  

“In early September,” he continued,  “the air and water are so mutual in temperature and feel that floating on the surface and watching the stars and harvest moon rise above the river is the nearest you can come to space walking without leaving earth’s atmosphere. As you float along in quiet suspension, earth, James, and cosmos meld into one.” With eyes now shining above smile-inflated cheeks Ralph White added, “It’s a marvelous experience, this floating.”

Ok. Ok. Wow! I was in. The Press Secretary of the James River had passed me privileged information on how to access the inner chambers. How to go on a special trip with Richmond’s Great Flow! Yes, I was in! Or so I thought.

I got busy. Every September I was haunted by the notion, the remembered conviction in Ralph’s voice, and the tempting description of a transcendent experience, and every September the harvest moon came and went as I worked and lived my way under and past.  10 times. Kindergarden thru 10^th  grade for one, toddler thru 7^th grade for the other, puppy thru senior citizen for another, parties, recessions, recedings, deaths, births — 120 moons of that stuff.

The haunting would finally end on September 9^th, 2014.     

Only with the help of Ralph’s wonderful description did I encourage my wife and one of my daughters, as well as our friends and their two young children, to try a space float with me. According to Ralph, for the best trip you should float through the celestial changing of the guard, watching the sun disappear in the west only moments before the harvest moon rises in the east.  This year, the clouds that had obscured the sunset and threatened to cancel the whole trip disbanded just enough for the moon to shine through.  That’s when we rushed to the river’s edge with our friends and pushed away from the southern bank a quarter mile or so west of the Huguenot Bridge.

The world was black in its wooded places, but purple and blue in open air or field. The grey clouds of daytime were breaking up into sorcerous white puffs, electrified and illuminate somehow by the sun’s strange afterthought. We started our trip by paddling to the opposite bank where the moon was more visible. The water received the canoe with only the quietest ripple. My daughter was giddy. I stirred the shiny soup with my paddle, heard the light chuckle of water on plastic, and I too grew giddy. Shrinking down, my wife Amy grabbed the sides of the canoe with each awkward tilt. She was sure, I think, that this was the big one. This was the time when one of my crazy ideas was finally gonna do us in.

Straight away I knew Ralph was right about leaving the beer at home. Beer, or any other mental laxative I might use to release the tension and stress of my day. On the river under a full moon, the proper frame of mind was awakened by the strangeness of the experience, and the quality of the light. After paddling through the rock garden separating us from the northern bank we gathered on the sand with our friends at the eastern tip of Long Island. The kids were the first to try the water, laughing and splashing near the edge. Then we all leaped in. We leaped away from earth and into the gentle space connecting water and sky. With our canoes drifting alongside, we floated. The kids were noisy and boisterous at first, but we encouraged them to quiet down. To look at the moon, and the stars, and to float.

I shined like the Silver Surfer when I lifted my arm or leg from the water, as though I had been dipped in molten steel. Under the harvest moon the surface of James had the creamy look of liquid metal, and the ripples from our motions made the reflected light dance and quiver around us.

As we neared the Huguenot Bridge, I complained that the noise and light were separating us from a more peaceful experience.  Floating a few yards away my friend Susan, always wise but perhaps wiser still after the recent loss of a precious life companion, reminded me to let those noisy speeding flashlights on the concrete above have their own place in it all. To let nothing we were experiencing seem alien, disruptive, or deficient. Susan reminded me to float.

Our bodies were widely dispersed on the surface, but 30 or 40 minutes into the dark drift, Brooke pushed through the liquid silver and attached herself to my chest. My 12 year old made a fetal curl against my left side, and a few minutes later said she didn’t want to go home. Me either. We became a strange, metallic sculpture noticed and shined by the harvest moon of 2014. We floated.

What was the point?  How does it end?

My wife says that when she tells the story of our little space float to a friend, the listener seems prepared for some dramatic ending or punchline. “And then, on our way back, the canoe tipped over and we all nearly drowned,” for instance, or “That’s when the moon spoke to us as the reflected face of God.” 

No. Nothing like that. Then what was the point?

It’s impossible to know for sure. Some kind of communion occurred, and as with any communion, the value of the experience is, strangely enough, difficult to commune-icate.  I find it difficult to package the experience into some bag or box labeled “Moral” or “Meaning.”

I do know that as I float limply on the moonlit surface of the James River with one of my spiritual piggyback riders curled close against me, I begin to lose my shape or outline. I begin to lose that often most painful element of my humanity – my identity. When my daughter, my wife and I are reduced to two hydrogens and an oxygen immersed in nature, responding only to universal instructions, and shined like liquid silver by the harvest moon, we transcend the human experience. I don’t so much leave my body as I dissolve into outer space. The space outer from “me.” And as my modern physics teaches me, once I dissolve my “self” into atoms, and then further into subatomic entities, I enter the realm where matter and energy are interchangeable. I become a more pure being, and feel welcomed into a universal experience that has no end, and for all I can tell, no “moral” or “meaning.” A place where stories are forever starting but never ending. My little human packaging efforts become nonsensical.

Yes, yes. Sure. But then we climb back into our shells of flesh, and back into the larger shell of fiberglass. We paddle back to our car, and then drive the rolling shell back to our house. And that’s when the strangest of all things happens. That’s when I pick up a pen and paper and scribble these small symbols, hoping to share with you something about the floating. I try to tell you about that special place of dissolution where it seems “OK” for it all to mean nothing at all. I try to tell you about a place where you stop wanting, flailing, treading, and exerting – a silvery, moonlit place where you only float.

Ralph knows all about these little spiritual bathplaces. About scrubbing between the atoms and getting refreshed for another difficult day in the life of an identified and named compilation of spirit and matter. Ralph knows how cleansing it is to explore places where identity fades and “meaning” is meaningless. To float in outer space.      

Ralph White…Spacewalker and Experiential Guide.

Thank you, my good Sir. Well Recommended.

Maymont’s paved paths and rolling hills will be the site of this weekend’s X-Country Festival.

If you like to run, bike or paddle, this is your kind of weekend here in the RVA.

It starts on Friday for the runners with the Sports Backers’ Maymont X-Country Festival. The Open 5K goes off at 6 p.m. and is a really cool opportunity to race in a place where you’d normally stroll and sightsee. As the Sports Backers’ website describes it: Maymont is a cross country runner’s dream. From the lavish 1893 Maymont House to the scenic wildlife areas that house bison, bald eagles, deer, bears and other animals, the estate is the perfect backdrop for a fall race.

The same is true for Saturday morning’s James River Loop 8-miler. This race is also open to the public, and while it starts and ends at Maymont, the course is really a showcase of Richmond’s downtown trails (click here for the map). Trail lovers will navigate Buttermilk and North Bank trails, as well as the singletrack on Belle Isle before they arrive back at the finish line.

Paddlers have two great options on Saturday, but they’ll have to pick one. At 9 a.m. the Friends of the Lower Appomattox River will host their annual 10-mile “Battle or Paddle” event — your opportunity for a fun paddle or a competitive race in your canoe, kayak, or SUP. The event begins at Petersburg’s Pocahontas Island and the full 10-mile length ends at the Hopewell City Marina near the convergence with the James River. There are also several take-out points along the river for those who do not want to paddle the entire route. At the finish a shuttle will return you and your boat to Petersburg. The entire course is flat water in the tidal section of the river. 

River lovers also have the option of paddling the falls of the James on Saturday as part of the Tour de Fall Line. This first-time event is half paddle, half bike (take your pick) and all celebration of the amazing natural resource we have in the middle of our city. For canoeists, kayakers, and SUPers, events begin at 10 a.m. (or earlier, if you prefer) at Mayo Island, where a shuttle provided by the VCU Outdoor Adventure Program will take everyone up to Huguenot Flatwater. At 10:30 a.m. paddlers can choose to run to Reedy Creek or keep going through the downtown rapids back to Mayo Island where beer, food and music await.

Buttermilk Trail will be part of the course for the 50-miler of Saturday’s Tour de Fall Line. Credit: Phil Riggan

James River Outdoor Coalition president Patrick Griffin said he wants paddlers of all abilities to come out and have a good time together, and, he added, “the river is very, very low so we will have sweep people to make sure everyone gets down safely.”

Mountain bikers have three options as part of the Tour de Fall Line: a 50-, 28- and 14-mile ride. All feature the world famous downtown Richmond singletrack, as well as some of the less well known Pirate Trails and, for the 50-milers, Powhite and Larus parks.  The $40 entry fee gets you a supported ride, a pint glass, one Sierra Nevada beer, Lee’s Fried Chicken and a concert on Mayo Island when you get back (the same is true for boaters and their $30 entry fee).

“It’s a hellacious deal,” said city trails manager Mike Burton. And he’s especially right when you consider that any profit goes to JROC and local mountain bike/trail building club Richmond MORE.

So, there you have it folks. Lace ’em up; break out the paddle; pump up the tires. You have options this weekend no matter your outdoors pleasure.

An adult bald eagle perches near its nest with two 10-week old chicks along the James River. Credit: CCBBirds.org

Back in early September, the Center for Conservation Biology released a report on the bald eagle population along the James River that I think is worth highlighting.

Every year scientists with the CCB conduct aerial surveys (via a Cessna 172) on the James from Powhatan County to the mouth of the river. As lead scientist Bryan Watts writes on the CCB blog:

Despite harsh weather conditions early in the breeding season, the bald eagle population along the James River continued to push forward in 2014. The 2014 aerial survey conducted by The Center for Conservation Biology recorded 223 pairs that produced 313 young. This population increase (8%) over 2013 matches the 30-year average.

The 223 pairs in 2014 was up from 205 pairs last year. Watts added that the “areas supporting the highest densities include Charles City County (50 pairs), James City County (35 pairs), Surry County (33 pairs), and Prince George County (26 pairs).”

The CCB has a really cool “Eagle Nest Locator” map on their site that allows web surfers to see where all the nests that Watts and his colleagues have mapped are, when the nests were last occupied (if not currently), and more. It’s definitely worth a look, if you haven’t seen it. It really gives you a sense for the distribution of bald eagles throughout the state.

Writes Watts: The James River population represents the best example of bald eagle recovery in the nation. By the early 1960s the once thriving population had been reduced to below 15 pairs due to environmental contaminants and by the mid-1970s no pairs remained along the river. Following the decline of banned compounds like DDT, recovery began with a single pair in 1980. Recovery was slow in the early years and as recently as 2000 the river supported only 57 pairs that produced 85 young. Since 2000, breeding eagles along the James have quadrupled resulting in one of the densest populations in eastern North America.

It’s Wednesday afternoon. That means the weekend is on the horizon, and as I mentioned last week, every Wednesday afternoon this fall you can check back here for a preview of what’s coming up between now and Sunday.

Who wouldn’t want to take the kids camping here? Credit: Tim Thompson

Before we even get to the weekend, there’s plenty going on. Take tonight: If you’ve followed the journey of the Terrain360/RichmondOutside mapping boat down the James this summer, come out to The Camel tonight and see the finished product. The James River Association is sponsoring a happy hour event as part of their Amazing Raise efforts. Ryan Abrahamsen and I will be on hand to tell stories from the summer’s adventure and show off what the one-of-a-kind tour will look like when we release it on Terrain360.com later this month. That’s tonight at 5 p.m. at The Camel, and it’s free.

Also on short notice: today is the last day to register for Maymont’s Family Camp Out. They’re calling this one “Creatures of the James,” and not only do you get to camp out with your kids at Maymont, but there’ll be a guided hike through the estate in search of native nocturnal creatures, and you can meet a few of Maymont’s own animal ambassadors. Afterwards, you’ll make s’mores and enjoy stories around the campfire. There’s even a Continental Breakfast and another hike the next day. (Ages 4 and older; one adult must register for every four children.)

If you haven’t seen some version of the advertising blitz for the VCU Broad Street Mile, well, you must have been out of town the past six weeks. On Saturday the mile/5K/fun run/festival kicks off at 10 a.m. between Belvidere and Hermitage on Broad Street. As the website says, “Broad Street will be transformed into two areas, a running course and festival. The running course will feature the VCU 5K to kick-off the event, and five themed one-mile races that start at 20 minute intervals. The free festival will feature live music, food trucks, local vendors, kids activities and a new RVA Sports Zone featuring the Richmond Flying Squirrels and other local professional sports teams. Sounds like a cool block party even if you’re not a runner.

Rodney the Ram will definitely be in attendance at the VCU Broad Street Mile.

If you are a runner, however, you could hit the VCU Broad Street Mile and still have time to lace them up at the Virginia Farm Bureau’s Stampede 5K at West Creek Parkway. There’s a kids run first at 4 p.m., then a manually timed 5K immediately following. After that the party begins, with food vendors, a farmer’s market, Center of the Universe Beer and agriculture-themed activities for kids.

Finally, on Sunday, there’s an event that if you haven’t trained for by now, you probably shouldn’t participate in. Or maybe you’re just that beastly of an athlete and you can do a half-iron-distance triathlon (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, 13.1-mile run) off the couch. If so, or if you want to see some of the region’s top endurance athletes battle it out over a cool urban course, come out to Rocketts Landing for the Richmond Rox Olympic Distance and Endurance Half Iron Triathlons.

A screen shot from the trip, looking back upstream after passing under the famed Atlantic Coastline Railroad bridge.

On June 23, RichmondOutside, Terrain360.com and the James River Association set off on a journey to map the entire James River — all 343 miles from mountains to sea. There were a lot of partners involved with the effort, but we couldn’t have done it without the financial and logistical support of the JRA.

On Wednesday (Sept. 17), as part of the JRA’s participation in The Amazing Raise, the group will host a party at the The Camel from 5-7 p.m., where we’ll show off the product of our labor this summer: An interactive, 360-degree, surface-level tour of the entire James River. This is a first-of-its-kind map of any river in the world. The full tour isn’t online yet, though it soon will be at Terrain360.com, RichmondOutside.com and EnvisiontheJames.org.

The public is invited Wednesday to see our presentation on the trip, and, if you’re feeling so inclined, give some money to the JRA as part of The Amazing Raise. In addition, local filmmaker Hunter Davis will be showing some of his James River-related short films. Entry is fee, but if you stay for the bands following us — The Silks, Mossetrap and Dr. Con — you’ll have to pay $5.

Don’t be put off by last week’s heat wave, folks, fall is on its way. And I don’t know about you, but fall is absolutely my favorite time of year. Even after a mild summer like this one, I’m ready for autumn and everything it calls to mind: leaf peepage, apple cider, cool days, cold nights by the outdoor fireplace, football. Call me crazy, but I even kind of enjoy raking leaves.

Volunteers during last year’s ‘Tire-less James’ fill up their batteau with tires. Credit: JRA

Fall is also a busy time of year for outdoor activities in the Richmond area. It seems like as soon as kids head back to school, the calendar explodes with stuff to do. The Events Calendar on our homepage has a comprehensive listing, but starting today, and continuing every Wednesday this fall, we’ll be highlighting the coming weekend’s can’t-miss events for outdoor lovers. (If you’re an event director and your ride, run, triathlon, festival, litter pickup, etc. is on the horizon, let us know so we can feature it.)

Last week, we gave you a heads up the James River Association’s Tire-less James event. Groups of volunteers will comb the river this Saturday in search of old tires and then Bridgestone will haul them away and recycle them (there’s still time to sign up). Ryan and I were up on the James below Iron Gate on Monday taking pictures for our river mapping project and we saw at least four tires between Iron Gate and Gala. So, if you happen to be on that section of the river, keep your eyes peeled.

The Tire-less James is running concurrently with the James River Advisory Council‘s huge James River Cleanup on Saturday. Pre-registration is closed, but you can still join the fun by just showing up to one of the official cleanup sites with close-toed shoes, water and gloves. They’ll provide the bags and take care of the the removal.

If you’re looking to get the heart rate up a little more, drive up to Ashland at 3 p.m. on Saturday for Center of the Universe Brewing Company’s Das Bier Run. There’ll be beer (natch), German food, a 13-piece authentic German band and a team relay fun run. And speaking of beer, yesterday we featured another beer-centric event taking place Saturday — the Spoke and Hop Fest. Head to Hardywood at noon on Saturday and you’ll find 25 Virginia craft breweries pouring two beers each and well as handmade bicycle fabricators from up and down the East Coast (including four from Richmond) showing off their craft bikes. Food trucks and live bands will also be blazing

That’s a busy Saturday folks, but there’s a natural progression in there: Start by cleaning up and giving back, go for a run and a beer then go check out some sweet handmade bikes and imbibe a little more while taking in some live music. Good times.

Any litter cleanup effort is a good litter cleanup effort, but there’s something about the James River Association’s now-annual “Tire-less James” that I really like. I mean, I pickup trash on every walk I do with my dogs or kids, not always a lot, but something every time. And every time, more new trash arrives. I’ve accepted this fact, even though I don’t understand it (It’s just not that hard not to litter). I’ve accepted that quite often it feels like the forces of good are losing (sometimes losing badly) to the forces of evil when it comes to litter. I’ve made my peace with that fact. I just repeat that famous line from Henry V — “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” — and head back out.

Volunteers during last year’s ‘Tire-less James’ fill up their batteau with tires. Credit: JRA

This is why I like the JRA’s Tire-less James effort: It feels like this battle is winnable. It feels like if you mobilized enough people up and down the river corridor, you really could rid it of tires entirely. Maybe I’m smoking something. Maybe more tires enter the river every year than I’d like to believe, but if this is a personal fantasy, it’s one I enjoy indulging.

Next Saturday, September 13, volunteers will take part in a massive one-day tire cleanup focused on the James. The JRA will partner with Virginia Canals & Navigations Society and the Boy Scouts of America for the event. Bridgestone Americas has returned to support JRA’s efforts by hauling away all tires collected during the cleanup. Through their Tires4Ward program, Bridgestone will find alternate uses for each tire collected by reusing, recycling or repurposing them.

During last year’s inaugural event, over 500 tires were removed from a section of the James River between Lynchburg and Richmond. This year, JRA is hoping to increase that number as “The Tire-less James” is extended to the entire length of the river.

“The James River faces numerous challenges on a daily basis, with pollution being one of the largest. By engaging volunteers in large scale cleanups like ‘The Tire-less James,’ JRA can have a direct and positive impact on the river here and now, “ said Pat Calvert, Upper James River Keeper.

Volunteers with boats that are appropriate for safely floating tires down a selected section of river are needed for the cleanup on September 13, 2014. Click here to register for the “The Tire-less James” cleanup or for more information. In order to cover the entire stretch of the James River from Iron Gate to Newport News, volunteers will be asked to register to cleanup a designated section and deliver tires to a set location for pickup.

Back in late May, I reported on the installation of counters — vehicle and infrared — at seven different units of the James River Park. The counters were made possible by a $2,000 gift from the Friends of the James River Park and the James River Outdoor Coalition. The idea with the counters was, for the first time, to acquire actual usage numbers for the 20-parcel, 550-acre park that runs through the heart of Richmond. Up until then, usage surveys were conducted and visitation estimates were extrapolated from there.

Infrared counters are used to count people at a couple of park locations.

With the heavy summer park-use season now over, I spoke with Nathan Burrell, JRPS superintendent, to see how much mounting those counters did. The results were pretty astounding.

“Up through July we were at 500,000+ visitors,” he said. “That’s May through July. And we only have counters at seven locations right now.”

Burrell said he’ll be getting the August numbers by the end of the week, and he expects them to be somewhere north of 100,000 visitors but probably less than July’s 160,000 tally. June had 141,000.

Burrell explained that they use a conservative coefficient to account for the fact that many of the cars that arrive at the park have multiple people in them and some people use the park more than one time a day.

“We’re missing some people there, but we thought it was a safe number. We wanted to be conservative. The last thing I wanted is to be wildly high and then people just disregard them.”

To put these numbers in perspective, in February the Times-Dispatch reported that Maymont was the “most-visited place in the Richmond area,” with 527,153 visitors in 2013. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was second in the region with 479,907 visitors. Rounding out the top five were the Children’s Museum of Richmond with 393,529 visitors; Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden with 339,139 visitors; and Three Lakes Nature Center and Aquarium with 304,621 visitors.

The James River Park has always been a popular place. We now know how popular. Credit: Richmond.com

The Washington Redskins training camp brought in 164,789 visitors this year.

Burrell said that in 2012, the park system conducted a survey of usage from which they extrapolated a year-long visitation number: that number was between 500,000 and 1.5 million. “We’re going to be close to that million mark (when 2014 is over),” Burrell said.

Here’s some more perspective that city council and the mayor should take note of for future budgets. The JRPS with it’s 1 million or more visitors a year is maintained by four full-time employees (including Burrell), two seasonal employees and one part-timer. That’s something to keep in mind when proposals for $250,000 Carytown signs and redundant, million-dollar bridges over the Haxall Canal come up for debate.

Matt Balazik holds an Atlantic sturgeon aboard his research boat on the tidal James River. Credit: Matt Balazik

I first wrote about Atlantic sturgeon in the James River in fall of 2009. I was the Times-Dispatch’s Outdoors columnist then, and I had met up with VCU fish biologist Matt Balazik and the James River Association’s Lower James Riverkeeper Chuck Frederickson near Hopewell to watch them conduct research on the prehistoric fish as they came up river to spawn.

Five years later, thanks to Balazik and a host of other agencies and individuals, so much more is known about the James River subspecies of sturgeon, a beast that was fished to near extinction (and onto the endangered species list).

I wrote a post on Friday about the sturgeon tours Balazik and good friend Mike Ostrander offer every Thursday in September. And thinking about those tours, about paying customers heading out in search of breaching sturgeon a few miles downstream of Richmond, made me wonder what Balazik is up to and where his research is headed these days.

Balazik said perhaps the biggest change from five years ago is that now the evidence is irrefutable that sturgeon in the James have a dual spring and fall spawn. It’s a rare trait in fish — most spawn only in the spring — and it’s taken years of data collection by Balazik to get to this point.

Another big discovery: This year, for the first time, Balazik figured out where the sturgeon “stage” before making there runs up river, sometimes as far as downtown Richmond, to procreate. Balazik didn’t want to give away the location in the tidal James where they stage, but, he said, “there are thousands in that hole. It’s this little sturgeon Mecca.”

Balazik returning a sturgeon to the James near Hopewell in October 2013.

When you consider that most adult sturgeon weigh well over 100 pounds — some over 300 — that’s an amazing thought: hundreds and hundreds of them stacked up on top of each other. Balazik said the males generally leave the staging area first.

“A lot of them have already made their initial run up. They’ll sit in an area close to a spawning ground and wait for the females. (Based on telemetry tags put into the fish, we know) one male has already gone past the rock quarries (just downstream of Richmond). I’m pretty sure they’ve been up to the Fall Line.”

I remember the hubbub two years ago this fall when what was likely a big male was spotted cruising around beneath the Mayo Bridge. Seeing it was like watching Richmond’s history swim back into the present. People lined up to watch.

Unlike the males, Balazik continued, the females’ “run is literally like a day. They’ll go all the way to the spawning grounds in one day.” A 60-mile run to spawn is nothing, he said.

“We’re still working on how they spawn. Are they one and done? We have data from two fish that show that they may do a practice run. We don’t know.”

A sturgeon in a holding tank. Credit: Matt Balazik

Balazik and others think there are spawning grounds on the hard bedrock — Atlantic sturgeon must have a rocky substrate to spawn on — at the Presquile cut-through and around the I-295 Varina-Enon Bridge. As for Richmond, while they haven’t officially confirmed any spawning activity at the fall line in downtown for years, “that’s perfect habitat when you think about it.”

So, keep that in mind, Richmonders, when you’re crossing the Mayo Bridge, putting a boat in at Ancarrow’s Landing or otherwise using that stretch of river. An animal older than many dinosaurs could be swimming around beneath you. In the meantime, check out Balazik’s sturgeon blog to lean more.