Tuesday, July 21, 2009

August's Full Sturgeon Moon



The full moon in August is most commonly known as the Sturgeon Full Moon. It is the time when this large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water is most readily caught.
Sturgeons are one of the oldest families of bony fish in existence, which first appeared in the fossil record approximately 200 million years ago. Therefore they are the most ancient of the ray-finned fishes. In their existence as a species they have undergone remarkably little morphological change, indicating that their evolution has been exceptionally slow and earning them informal status as living fossils. This is explained in part by the long inter-generation time, tolerance for wide ranges of temperature and salinity, lack of predators due to size, and the abundance of prey items when bottom-feeding.

Besides the Sturgeon Moon it is also called the Fish Moon, because most rivers and lakes are filled with schools of fish. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because the moon rises looking reddish through sultry haze or the Lightning Moon or the Grain Moon.


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