Do you know the name of the largest freshwater fish in Europe? Well it is Beluga Sturgeon also popularly known as Great Sturgeon. This freshwater fish weighs around 2000 kg and is capable of jumping as high as 6 meters. Moreover, their maturation is a delayed process and efficiently hold the capability to produce a lot of off springs. This causes some variation in environmental conditions. As these fishes have a tendency to mature late, their energy is allocated towards growth and hence they attain a larger size. This reduces their capability to prey on other animals but on the other hands increases their life span. They reabsorb their eggs during unsuitable conditions for spawning.

Do you know the name of the largest freshwater fish in Europe? Well it is Beluga Sturgeon also popularly known as Great Sturgeon. This freshwater fish weighs around 2000 kg and is capable of jumping as high as 6 meters. Moreover, their maturation is a delayed process and efficiently hold the capability to produce a lot of off springs. This causes some variation in environmental conditions. As these fishes have a tendency to mature late, their energy is allocated towards growth and hence they attain a larger size. This reduces their capability to prey on other animals but on the other hands increases their life span. They reabsorb their eggs during unsuitable conditions for spawning.

Adaptations that have allowed beluga sturgeon to thrive in naturally changing conditions are now putting this species at a disadvantage. In the past century, anthropogenicfactors, such as overfishing, damming, and destruction of habitat have caused almost all sturgeon species to decrease in abundance; it also happened that many of these populations were on a high risk of being endangered, threatened or even extinct. And if we talk about our Beluga Sturgeon, the poor species is highly prone to being fished and is very poorly managed. This story of the poor creature is true throughout the Caspian Sea region.

Reasons for decline of Beluga Sturgeon

The river bodies like the Caspian Sea, the Black sea and Sea of Azov have witnessed Beluga Sturgeon a lot as these fishes like to spend most of their time in brackish waters. They also feed in these brackish water bodies only. When it is time to spawn, the anatropous sturgeon leave these brackish areas and swim upstream to freshwater rivers. In the 1950s, hydroelectric dams were built on many of these freshwater rivers, blocking sturgeon from critical spawning habitat and leading to a decrease in natural reproduction (Khodorevskaya et al., 1997). It is anticipated that dams on rivers are prominent to the Caspian Sea which have however impacted 90% of beluga sturgeon breeding grounds. Some failed attempts by engineers were put to construct dams that provided passage devices to allow passage for spawning sites.

In the past fishermen had the tendency to harvest these freshwater giants before the time that they turned mature. If we believe in researches, the sexual maturity size of Beluga Sturgeon is around 160 – 200 centimeters. There is one more problem relate to the harvesting of these giant freshwater fishes and that is the males of this breed cannot be distinguished from females without anatomization. As there is no difference point between males and females of this breed, fishermen in search of caviar by mistake kill the male Sturgeon, which ultimately leads to a loss in population of these fishes.

The poachers steamed along in their fast boat, following their global positioning system (GPS) to the exact location where they had set their net. The mid water floats hid the net. In a hurry five of the workers started pulling the net. Sometime later the net felt heavy to them. They became excited and happy as they thought they have caught the fish. As the number of Sturgeon left in Caspian Sea is very low, they rarely got a chance to catch a fish this big. A female this size could produce around 5 kilograms of caviar, which could sell for more than $5000/kilogram on the regular market. Caviar is real high in demand in the market and is sold for real high prices. When the fish caught was lifted onto the boat, she tried escaping and waved her tail, in an attempt to go back to the water. In the excitement the poachers cut open the belly of the fish, but alas! Unfortunately it was empty. The fish had released her eggs. This was the second time that the poachers found themselves unlucky. The first time they caught a fish that day turned out to be a male Sturgeon. Now, the poachers decide to sell the meat of the fish. But the price of the meat of the fish is too low when compared with the price of the caviar. Her eggs were what they wanted and, since she had already released them, this fish had been killed for nothing.

Decision

Discussing the crucial section of the case study, it has been resulted that in 2006, CITIES discontinued international trade of all wild sturgeon caviar from the Black Sea-lower Danube River basin, Caspian Sea basin, and Amur River basin due to the fall in sturgeon population count. Moreover, only Iran was the one individual country to be allowed to export caviar with a quota of around 45,000 kg of Persian sturgeon caviar. In 2007, the suspension on trade for several countries was lifted if management plans could showcase the sustainable harvest report. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and the Russian Federation would be permitted to trade a total of 86 tons of wild sturgeon caviar in 2007 (CITES, 2007). However, the quota only allowed the trade of Russian, Persian, and stellate sturgeon species; CITES postponed thedecision on beluga sturgeon trade in order to allow export countries to find the information about sustainability of these giants which was missing. A month later, CITES set quotas and re-opened the trade of the beluga sturgeon for 2007 (Roberson and Crown over, 2007).

The spawning of the poor creature is still being blocked by dams. An illegal fishing of the Beluga Sturgeon is very high throughout the Caspian Sea region. Consumers still demand caviar, driving both the legal and illegal markets. Well this is a very small list of problems faced by the poor freshwater fishes. The journey of their recovery is very difficult.

If several parties got twisted in this complications, and are also willing to contribute the work as a team, it may be allow beluga sturgeon populations to successfully recover.