Sturgeon: Once Plentiful, Now Endangered

Sturgeon were once so bountiful in America that fishermen considered them a nuisance, but unrestricted fishing in the 20th century decimated their numbers. In 1898, 20,000 Alabama sturgeon were harvested. By the late 1990s, Alabama sturgeon were so rare that it took biologists three years and 4,000 hours of fishing to locate five animals to study. The king sturgeon of the Hudson River is faring just as poorly, and the Great Lakes sturgeon has become extinct.

Today, the primary habitat for sturgeon is the Caspian Sea. Until the 1990s, only two nations bordered the Caspian Sea: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Iran. Both held national monopolies on the caviar trade, and the two countries cooperated to prevent overfishing.

The Caspian Sea, home of most remaining caviar-producing sturgeon.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and three new countries joined Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. Initially, none of these new countries instituted quotas on sturgeon harvesting. On the contrary, they were so impoverished that the sale of caviar was pursued zealously.

Sturgeon populations quickly collapsed. As harvests of the three primary species dropped, and international demand increased, poachers began overfishing not only the three major species in the Caspian, but the minor species in other rivers throughout Europe and Asia. The results were disastrous. A hundred years ago, the annual sturgeon catch in the Caspian was 50,000 tons. Today, it is less than 5,700 tons and every species of sturgeon is considered endangered.

All told, though, the greatest threat remains overharvesting. To survive, sturgeon must be allowed to reproduce. No more than 50% to 60% can be harvested before spawning if sturgeon are to maintain their numbers. But fishermen now kill nearly 90% before they can lay their eggs. As a result, the sturgeon population has plummeted. It is impossible for their numbers to rebound quickly because it takes years for a sturgeon to reach breeding age.

This has led to strict quotas being passed, but unless these quotas are enforced wild sturgeon will quickly become a thing of the past. Previously, import quotas could not be enforced because there was no way to tell the different kinds of caviar apart. But DNA testing has changed all that.