Fishing for Wild Sturgeon Banned Indefinitely in Romania

Romania has taken a firm decision to indefinitely extend its 5-year temporary ban on fishing and selling of all 6 wild sturgeon species and wild sturgeon products. It now joins other countries in the region where sturgeon fishing has been permanently banned. Bulgaria remains the last country in the Black Sea Basin without a permanent ban in place, but it extended its temporary ban on sturgeon fishing in its Danube and Black Sea territory in January for another five years.

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Poaching & illegal trade, major threat to migratory fish

With all but one of Europe’s remaining sturgeon species facing extinction, a new report details the scale of the poaching and illegal trade in wild sturgeon caviar and meat in the lower Danube and Black Sea, which threatens the survival of these iconic fish. WWF’s new market survey found that one third of the sturgeon meat and caviar products in four key sturgeon countries – Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine – were sold illegally.

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Rare STURGEON back in Slovenia and Georgia

In 2020, a sterlet was caught in Slovenia, in the Drava River, just before Christmas. Workers at the Formin Hydropower Plant were doing their maintenance work when they discovered a rare visitor, a species of sturgeon which hadn’t been seen in the Drava River since 2001. Sturgeon are making a comeback in Georgia, too, in the Rioni River. In 2020, anglers were surprised to catch two ship sturgeon in the river: one in mid-March and one in April. Surprised not because these were sturgeon, since the river is home to several species, among which,  the world’s only population of Colchic sturgeon (Acipenser [persicus] colchicus), but because the ship sturgeon had not been spotted for years.

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In Search of the Great White…

Sturgeon are known for their diamond pattern and varying hues of silver, gray and blue. Caviar is black and there are even stories of other fish roe sold as caviar after some black dye was added. So white is not generally the colour that would come to mind when thinking of sturgeon. So, how come we have white sturgeons and caviar? And where would one find them?

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