Cool Moon Facts by Whip

Real astronomy and dated history, with sources. Documented traditions and folklore. Modern lunar astrology · symbolic, not predictive.

August

Sturgeon Moon

Lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes were most easily caught in late summer, and they were worth catching: a fish that can exceed two metres, live over a century, and has been in more or less its current form since before the dinosaurs ended. The name records a fishery, which makes it one of the more specific and checkable in the list.

Where the name comes from

It also records something that has since gone. Lake sturgeon were fished, dammed and polluted to a fraction of their former numbers through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and are now a protected species across most of their range. The month still has the name; the abundance that earned it does not exist.

Also called Green Corn Moon, Grain Moon.

Old Farmer's Almanac; lake sturgeon status from US Fish & Wildlife Service

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