It looks like a fish caught in a time warp at the bottom of the sea, but its antediluvian form does not put off gourmets from enjoying its flesh and eggs. Few fish are more ancient than the sturgeon. A throwback to the Triassic when dinosaurs were just gettting started, the sturgeon of today looks much as it did 85 million years ago. Evolutionary prowess does not guarantee survival in the age of the
naked ape. Sturgeon is critically endangered by pollution in rivers, lakes, and estuaries, and by the deliciousness of its roe. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists 18 species worldwide as endangered, 16 critically. One of those is the Atlantic sturgeon,
Acipenser oyxrinchus oxyrinchus, but when the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) proposed adding the species to the endangered list in 2010, it did not include the Atlantic sturgeon. Despite a 1998 ban on sport and commercial fishing, many populations have not shown appreciable recovery according to NMFS. There is little dispute the Atlantic sturgeon is suffering from intense pollution of coastal waters. The Delaware Bay and River were once the venue for great aggregations of spawning sturgeon, now sightings of juveniles or spawning adults are rare. Nevertheless, there is not a lot of consensus among ichthyologists about an inscrutable fish that lives most of its life in the dark depths out of the sight of man, and the lack of data is hindering legal protection of the fish.
Atlantic sturgeon can live for more than sixty years and weigh 600 pounds. It is superbly adapted to survive on bottom-dwelling mollusks, worms, crustaceans and insects. It breeds slowly however, not reaching maturity until 11 to 24 years old, depending on the population. Younger females carry fewer eggs. Sturgeon migrate between fresh and salt water like salmon, but unlike salmon, sturgeon may stay at sea for a decade where they often travel great distances. A tagged Delaware River sturgeon was tracked to Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, a journey of 1,000 miles in 53 days. Until more sturgeon are implanted with telemetry, their aquatic wanderings will
confound scientists trying to help them avoid extinction. Sturgeon flesh was not considered a tasty consumable by European settlers. For native Americans it was an
important source of food and oil. Sturgeon eggs, processed as caviar, became a delicacy after the Civil War when railroad shipment of preserved roe was possible. Within twenty years there were thousands of fishermen seeking sturgeon on the east coast and the harvest was more than 7 million pounds. By 1899 a keg of roe cost $105, reflecting the carnage that depleted the prey. The great sturgeon migrations up the major east coast rivers ceased, probably for all time.
