Facts about Sturgeon
Economically, several species of sturgeons are harvested for their roe, which is made into caviar—a luxury food that makes some sturgeons pound for pound the most valuable of all harvested fish.
Collectively, the Acipenseridae family is also known as the true sturgeons.
The Jewish law of kashrut, which only permits the consumption of fish with scales, forbids sturgeon, as they have ganoid scales instead of the permitted ctenoid and cycloid scales.
No species are known to naturally occur south of the equator, though attempts at sturgeon aquaculture are being made in Uruguay, South Africa, and other places (Burtzev, 1999).
Acipenseridae is one the oldest families of bony fish in existence and sturgeons are one of the few vertebrate taxa that retains a notochord into adulthood.
Sturgeons have been referred to as both the Leviathans (connoting great size) and Methuselahs (connoting great age of life span) of freshwater fish.
Sturgeons provide important economic, ecological, and aesthetic values.
Sturgeons also are probably the longest-lived of the fishes, some living well over 100 years and attaining sexual maturity after 20 years or more (Berg 1962).
True sturgeons appear in the fossil record during the Upper Cretaceous.
Sturgeons can reach great size; sturgeons ranging from 7–12 feet (2-3Ѕ m) in length are common, and some species grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m).
Sturgeons are native to subtropical, temperate, and sub-Arctic rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America.
Most species of sturgeons are currently considered to be at risk of extinction, making them more critically endangered than any other group of species.
Sturgeons are unique from most vertebrates in that the notochord is retained in adults.
Sturgeons are polyploid; some species have four, eight, or 16 sets of chromosomes (Anderson 2002).
Sturgeon range from subtropical to subarctic waters in North America and Eurasia.
Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders, spawning upstream and feeding in river deltas and estuaries.
Globally, sturgeon fisheries are of great value, primarily as a source for caviar, but also for flesh.
Traditionally, the term caviar referred only to roe from wild sturgeon in the Caspian and Black Seas (Davidson and Jaine 2006.
The Order Acipenseriformes includes two extant families: the sturgeons (family Acipenseridae) and the paddlefishes (family Polyodontidae).
The rarest and costliest is from beluga sturgeon that swim in the Caspian Sea.
Sturgeons also are probably the longest-lived of the fishes, some living well over 100 years and attaining sexual maturity after 20 years or more (Berg 1962).
A further confounding factor is the peculiar ability of sturgeons to produce reproductively viable hybrids, even between species assigned to different genera.
The rarest and costliest is from beluga sturgeon that swim in the Caspian Sea.