Today, there are only two major runs of wild white sturgeon reproducing on the Pacific Coast, in the Sacramento-San Joaquin system, which feeds the Bay-Delta, and the Columbia River along the Oregon and Washington border. Hulking white sturgeon, which can grow to 20 feet long and 1,500 pounds and are a favorite for sport fishing, have declined to just 7 percent of their 1998 population.īoth species range in rivers, estuaries and the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to Alaska. In April, green sturgeon, which can reach over 7 feet in length and weigh 350 pounds, were listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. Lauded by famous chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Traci Des Jardins, California’s homegrown white sturgeon caviar is finding favor among connoisseurs.īut even as sturgeon farming takes off, the Delta’s own wild sturgeon are in trouble. In California’s San Francisco Bay-Delta, sturgeon farms started in the past two decades may help keep pressure off wild populations in the Caspian. But overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution have imperiled Caspian sturgeon, and in January, an international trade ban went into effect on wild caviar.Īmericans are among the world’s biggest consumers of caviar, and one solution to the plight of the wild sturgeon may actually lie here at home. Sturgeon from the Caspian Sea have long been prized for their caviar, made from unfertilized roe whose harvest requires killing the female fish. But today, these feisty living fossils - bottom-dwellers with sandpapery skin, rows of sharp bony plates and shark-like fins - may be on their way out. Two hundred million years ago, sturgeon swam in the waters of the planet’s first continent, Pangaea.
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