![]() While some white sturgeon populations on the Pacific Coast are abundant enough to support limited recreational and commercial fishing, Alabama sturgeon are so rare that none have been caught for years.Īcross America, dams still keep some sturgeon populations low by blocking ancient spawning routes. These discoveries provide some hope for a fish that is among the world’s most threatened.īut the US sturgeon population is only a tiny fraction of what it once was - and the health of each species and regional populations vary widely. And they’re seeing increased numbers of them in some rivers because of cleaner water, dam removals and fishing bans. Scientists have been finding sturgeon in places where they were thought to be long gone. Matthew Balazik, a sturgeon research ecologist with Virginia Commonwealth University, holds a frozen Atlantic sturgeon on caught on Virginia’s James River. “However, in the past three decades, sturgeon have been among the most studied species in North America as a result of their threatened or endangered status,” said James Crossman, president of The North American Sturgeon and Paddlefish Society, a conservation group. Steep declines in many populations weren’t fully apparent until the 1990s. Now, they’re almost every place we’re looking.”įollowing the late 1800s caviar rush, America’s nine sturgeon species and subspecies were plagued by pollution, dams and overfishing. “We didn’t think they were there, frankly. “It’s really been a dramatic reversal of fortune,” said Greg Garman, a Virginia Commonwealth University ecologist who studies Atlantic sturgeon in Virginia’s James River. ![]() Increased numbers are appearing in the cold streams of Maine, the lakes of Michigan and Wisconsin and the coffee-colored waters of Florida’s Suwannee River.Ī 14-foot Atlantic sturgeon - as long as a Volkswagen Beetle - was recently spotted in New York’s Hudson River. ![]() More than a century later, some populations of the massive bottom-feeding fish are showing signs of recovery in the dark corners of US waterways. Sturgeon were America’s vanishing dinosaurs, armor-plated beasts that crowded the nation’s rivers until mankind’s craving for caviar pushed them to the edge of extinction. Orange ya glad! Zoo announces the birth of adorable endangered leaf monkeyĮndangered whale's decline slows - but population falls againĬop's post bragging about skinning, eating protected crocodile sparks outrageĪs bald eagle makes miraculous comeback in US, author reveals that humans 'redeemed ourselves'ĬHARLES CITY, Va. ![]()
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