The sturgeon is one of the oldest bony fishes in existence. The fossil record shows that it has been around for 175 million years. It bones are made of primarily of cartilage similar to a shark’s. There are various species of sturgeon live in Europe, Asia and North America. Seven species of sturgeon have been reported in North America and two are found in on the west coast – green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) and white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus). Both species are anadromous which means, like salmon, they live in salt water and migrate up rivers to spawn, only sturgeon do not die like salmon. Three sturgeons inhabit New York waters – shortnose sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum), lake sturgeon (A. fulvescens), and Atlantic sturgeon (A. oxyrhynchus). Of the three the Atlantic sturgeon is anadromous and ascends large rivers to spawn. The Atlantic sturgeon population is restricted primarily to the Hudson River.
I am most familiar with the white sturgeon having worked with them in the Pacific Northwest. It is hard to confuse white sturgeon with other species. The whites are large fish and have been known to grow up to 12 feet and weigh over 2000 lbs. The body is long and cylindrical, with colors from green / gray on the back to light gray or white on the belly. The body is covered with large armor-like scutes (bony plates) rather than scales. The nose or rostrum of white sturgeon is flattened. There are four barbels or fleshy whisker-like projections in front of the mouth are that are sensory organs used to detect food since they live on the bottom of large murky rivers.
Sturgeons have protrusible mouths they use to grab fishes and invertebrates along the silty bottom – sucking food in like a vacuum cleaner. The white sturgeon and others were harvested commercially for many years for their roe to use as caviar and their flesh. Its swim bladder is still used as a thickening agent in cooking called isinglass. Many white sturgeons were harvested using harpoons. Fishermen would stand on bridges looking for the fish as they migrated up river to spawn and spear them.
The white sturgeon has a very long lifespan. Some live to be over 100 years old. They tend to grow slowly and do not spawn until the females are over 18 years of age and males are at least 14.
The white sturgeon is a large powerful fish though it does not look like it. In 1980 I worked on the John Day dam on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington counting and freeze branding down migrating young salmon. Part of my job was to go down into the dam’s gate wells when they were drained and remove any live fish. The Columbia River is native water for the white sturgeon. The white sturgeon in the dark of a gatewell looked like half a telephone pole, with attitude, lying in two feet of water. Some of the laborers I worked with were not the sharpest knives in the box but they would do just about anything they were asked.
We had to manhandle the sturgeon into a lift net so they could be hauled out by crane and released. One of the laborers got a little tired of “doing it the hard way” so he grabbed onto the tail of an 1100 pound sturgeon and tried to haul it into the net. I swear that fish turned, looked at him, flicked its tail and tossed him ten feet in the air, over our heads and into a concrete wall. He was fine, just a little shaken up. At least he did not say, ‘Watch me do this!” when he grabbed the tail.
All species of sturgeon are either threatened or endangered. Damming rivers, pollution, poor land management practices and over fishing has pushed these ‘old men’ of the river to near extinction.
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