Life as a sturgeon begins as a sticky egg attached to some gravel at the bottom of a fast-moving stream or river. Eggs hatch quickly, within two weeks. Little larval sturgeon stay close to the bottom and feed on algae and small aquatic insects on their way to estuaries, where they'll spend the majority of their lives.

Sturgeon are slow growing, long-lived fish. It may take them over 10 years to become sexually mature. Once mature, they mate only every 4 to 11 years. But when they do, they don't fool around. A single female sturgeon can produce several million eggs. Most of these eggs will be lost in the current or eaten by predators.

At the Oregon Coast Aquarium
In our new At the Jetty exhibit we have several white sturgeon.

White Sturgeon Acinpenser transmontanus

The white sturgeon is the largest fish in North America with some reports of fish nearly 20 feet long and weighing 1,800 pounds. It is also one of the longest living fish--old-timers reaching the century mark and beyond. Sturgeon find their food on the bottom with sensory barbels under their snout. They root around in the mud looking for invertebrates and small fish that they will suck up with their tube-shaped vacuum mouth. The Columbia river is home to a population of white sturgeon. They spawn in early summer from May to July and spend the rest of the year in estuaries along the Pacific coast. Some sturgeons have been isolated by human activities resulting in at least one active population in Montana. Since sturgeons do not use fish ladders, dams become impenetrable barriers.

ENDANGERED There is one landlocked population of white sturgeon in the Kootenai river of Montana and British Columbia that is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Columbia river population below the Bonneville dam is large enough again to support sport and commercial fisheries. Due to increased fishing pressure and demand for caviar worldwide all sturgeon species are now officially protected under CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

In the late 1800s the Columbia was home to a booming sturgeon fishery. Since then their numbers have bottomed out and, more recently, returned. While the meat is popular (especially smoked) and the swim bladder valued for the production of isinglass (used to clarify beer and wines), the real value of the sturgeon fishery is in caviar. With prices ranging into to hundreds of dollars per pound, that's not surprising.

Caviar is sturgeon eggs. To prepare caviar, the eggs must be removed from a dead sturgeon or (preferably) milked from a live sturgeon. The eggs are then rinsed and drained. Salt is mixed into the roe by hand, the eggs are allowed to drain again and then the caviar is vacuum packed. Temperature is critical throughout the process and must be closely monitored.

The most valued caviar (the beluga, osetra and sevruga) comes from sturgeon species the Caspian Sea. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the new nations surrounding the Caspian have been ruthlessly competing for this resource with disastrous results. As the sturgeon populations in the Caspian plummet, North American caviar from species such as the white sturgeon are becoming increasingly popular. According to the World Wildlife Fund, North American caviar accounts for 30 percent of world caviar production. Some Russian caviar is said to be of North American origin, sent to Russia to be packaged. As caviar demand continues to rise and stocks elsewhere in the world continue to shrink, more attention will need to be paid to the conservation of this ancient, slow-growing fish.