Lake Sturgeon (3″ figure by Replica Toy Fish)

Back with another Replica Toy Fish figure in the 3″ line, another of the models released in or around April of 2015. Again, I think one that I caught wind of via another collector or forum. This one is the lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, a species that was seen once before in the Safari Great Lakes toob, and was a welcome addition to the RTF series as well.

As that Safari toob indicated, lake sturgeon are of course found in the Great Lakes and the surrounding St. Lawrence-Great Lakes basin, but also range even more widely across America in fresh and occasionally brackish waters in the Hudson Bay and Mississippi basins as well, from rivers in the prairies of Canada across to the St Lawrence river, and as far south as Alabama. This distribution reflects areas that were linked by large lakes during the Pleistocene glacial periods, so for those collectors interested in Ice Age animals, here’s a fish you can include! Lake sturgeon, despite the name, are equally at home in lakes or rivers, as long as suitable spawning and feeding habitat is available. They prefer cooler water, so in summers prefer to find deeper areas within streams.

Like all sturgeon, lake sturgeon are benthic predators, using sensitive barbels and their sense of smalle to find invertebrates and fish on the substrate. This must work well for them since males can live as long as 55 years and females 80-150 years, growing as large as 2.7 metres (almost 9 feet) long! Of course these long lives mean long waits for breeding, so Lake sturgeon have some interesting conservation challenges. As well as slow breeding, challenges with habitat fragmentation and fishing pressures have them listed as Endangered by the IUCN, but can be locally abundant or classified differently. Wisconsin famously holds a spearing season for sturgeon due to a population that is considered stable enough to support it–but no-take protections are generally in place (like in my home province).

The actual figure is on the smaller side, similar to the Great Lakes figure but proportioned differently. It has the expected fusiform body, long snout with a tapered body. The back is high, and a thicker body, somewhat more foreshortened. The body has the 5 rows of scutes clearly sculpted, one along the dorsal line, one on each side (along the lateral line), and one along the margin of the belly on both sides. The scutes are well sculpted, oriented in a backward-facing point. The scutes are tightly spaced and overlapped, which seem a little too close for an adult, but it’s better that the scutes are clear. The fins are sculpted well, with heavy rays incised. The dorsal fin has a nice notch on it, but the ventral fins could be a little more pointed. The tail fin is heterocercal but the upper lobe seems to extend more back than up, giving a more flattened edge instead of the expected high upper lobe and short lower lobe.

The head is broad and pointed, with a rounded snout and deeply sculpted opercula. On the underside the four barbels and mouth are clearly marked out which is great, although it’s a shame they’re unpainted. The eyes are present as small bumps, painted as black dots, which helps them stand out. In front of the eyes are small indented spiracles, a great touch that it’s good to see captured on the model. But one thing I need to say…the continuous slope of the snout and short skull…it’s honestly more like a white sturgeon; in a lake sturgeon we’d expect to see a somewhat flatter or more scooped snout. It can vary with age and environment, but is notable on the figure.

The colouring is pretty basic. The dorsum is a light green, extending from the back to the lateral scutes. Below that, the body has been left entirely white. The green colour is applied unevenly, so that is can be somewhat lighter or darker along the body. The only other colour is some highlighting on the fins–the tail is mostly yellow, and the ventral fins are lightly washed in green and yellow. For such a good sculpt, it’s almost a shame–lake sturgeon should be variously brown or gray along the back and sides, with a sharply delineated light belly. The Great Lakes toob definitely captured this better.

So overall, this is a good figure–sturgeon are generally not seen much as figures, especially outside of Chinese and Japanese sets, and North American species are less common. There are certainly some elements of this model that could have stood a bit of tweaking; as always with Replica Toy Fish, the sculpts and intents and often great, but the paint jobs often miss the marks. I’m at least happy to say that a really good lake sturgeon is currently readily available, something that seemed completely unlikely just a few years ago, and paired with this one, it almost seems like two completely different species. Still, I’m not disparaging the model–it was a welcome surprise when this figure was released, and I will always be excited to see more sturgeon toys!