August 26, 2024
After seeing the carved sturgeon yesterday I had to see what the deal was with this fish. Lord, they are huge!!
Sturgeon (from Old English styrġa ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *str̥(Hx)yón-[1]) is the common name for the 28 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the Late Cretaceous, and are descended from other, earlier acipenseriform fish, which date back to the Early Jurassic period, some 174 to 201 million years ago. They are one of two living families of the Acipenseriformes alongside paddlefish (Polyodontidae). The family is grouped into four genera: Acipenser (which is paraphyletic, containing many distantly related sturgeon species), Huso, Scaphirhynchus, and Pseudoscaphirhynchus. Two species (A. naccarii and A. dabryanus) may be extinct in the wild, and one (P. fedtschenkoi) may be entirely extinct.[2] Sturgeons are native to subtropical, temperate and sub-Arctic rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America.[3] A Maastrichtian-age fossil found in Morocco shows that they also once lived in Africa.[4]
Sturgeons are long-lived, late-maturing fishes with distinctive characteristics, such as a heterocercal caudal fin similar to those of sharks, and an elongated, spindle-like body that is smooth-skinned, scaleless, and armored with five lateral rows of bony plates called scutes. Several species can grow quite large, typically ranging 2–3.5 m (7–12 ft) in length. The largest sturgeon on record was a beluga female captured in the Volga Delta in 1827, measuring 7.2 m (23 ft 7 in) long and weighing 1,571 kg (3,463 lb). Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders, migrating upstream to spawn but spending most of their lives feeding in river deltas and estuaries. Some species inhabit freshwater environments exclusively, while others primarily inhabit marine environments near coastal areas, and are known to venture into open ocean.
Several species of sturgeon are harvested for their roe, which is processed into the luxury food caviar. This has led to serious overexploitation, which combined with other conservation threats, has brought most of the species to critically endangered status, at the edge of extinction.
Evolution
Range and habitat
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Sturgeon depicted on an ancient Greek Tetrachalkon (bronze coin) from Panticapaeum on the Crimean peninsula (Black Sea), 310–304 B.C.
Sturgeon range from subtropical to subarctic waters in North America and Eurasia. In North America, they range along the Atlantic Coast from the Gulf of Mexico to Newfoundland, including the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers, as well as along the West Coast in major rivers from California and Idaho to British Columbia. They occur along the European Atlantic coast, including the Mediterranean basin, especially in the Adriatic Sea and the rivers of North Italy;[20] in the rivers that flow into the Black, Azov, and Caspian Seas (Danube, Dnepr, Volga, Ural and Don); the north-flowing rivers of Russia that feed the Arctic Ocean (Ob, Yenisei, Lena, Kolyma); in the rivers of Central Asia (Amu Darya and Syr Darya) and Lake Baikal. In the Pacific Ocean, they are found in the Amur River along the Russian-Chinese border, on Sakhalin Island, and some rivers in northeast China.[21][16]
Throughout this extensive range, almost all species are highly threatened or vulnerable to extinction due to a combination of habitat destruction, overfishing, and pollution.[16]
No species is known to naturally occur south of the equator, though attempts at sturgeon aquaculture are being made in Uruguay, South Africa, and other places.[22]
Most species are at least partially anadromous, spawning in fresh water and feeding in nutrient-rich, brackish waters of estuaries or undergoing significant migrations along coastlines. However, some species have evolved purely freshwater existences, such as the lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) and the Baikal sturgeon (A. baerii baicalensis), or have been forced into them by human or natural impoundment of their native rivers, as in the case of some subpopulations of white sturgeon (A. transmontanus) in the Columbia River[23] and Siberian sturgeon (A. baerii) in the Ob basin.[
Globally, sturgeon fisheries are of great value, primarily as a source for caviar, but also for flesh.[42] Several species of sturgeon are harvested for their roe which is processed into caviar—a delicacy, and the reason why caviar-producing sturgeons are among the most valuable and endangered of all wildlife resources.[43]
During the 19th century, the US was the global leader in caviar production, having cornered 90% of the world's caviar trade.[44] Atlantic sturgeon once thrived along the east coast from Canada down to Florida. They were in such abundance in the Hudson River that they were humorously called "Albany beef" and sturgeon eggs were given away at local bars as an accompaniment to 5¢ beer.[45] White sturgeon populations along the US west coast declined simultaneously under the pressure of commercial fishing and human encroachment. Within the course of a century, the once abundant sturgeon fisheries in the US and Canada had drastically declined, and in some areas had been extirpated under the pressure of commercial overharvesting, pollution, human encroachment, habitat loss, and the damming of rivers that blocked their ancestral migration to spawning grounds.[44][46]
By the turn of the century, commercial production of sturgeon caviar in the US and Canada had come to an end. Regulatory protections and conservation efforts were put in place by state and federal resource agencies in the US and Canada, such as the 1998 US federal moratorium that closed all commercial fishing for Atlantic sturgeon.[46] It was during the 20th century that Russia grew to become the global leader as the largest producer and exporter of caviar.[44] As with the decline in sturgeon populations in the US and Canada, the same occurred with sturgeon populations in the Caspian Sea.[47]
Beginning with the 1979 US embargo on Iran, poaching and smuggling sturgeon caviar was big business but an illegal and dangerous one.[48] Officers with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) busted a poaching ring that was based in Vancouver, Washington. The poachers had harvested 1.65 tons of caviar from nearly 2,000 white sturgeon that were poached from the Columbia River. The caviar was estimated to be worth around $2 million. WDFW busted another ring in 2003, and conducted an undercover sting operation in 2006-2007 that resulted in 17 successful attempts out of a total of 19.[49]
In response to concerns over the future of sturgeons and associated commercial products, international trade for all species of sturgeons has been regulated under CITES since 1998
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