(CN) — A large sturgeon that haunts the waters in the Amur region between China and Russia has been proposed for addition to the endangered species list, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday. The Amur sturgeon has lost up to 85% of its historical population, mostly due to demand for caviar, a delicacy in Russia.
“Prior to the current set of fisheries regulations, legal overharvest caused a greater than 99% decline in the volume of Amur sturgeon caught in Russia between 1891 and 1948,” the wildlife service said in the proposal published Thursday. “Fishing records from China similarly indicate that overfishing has caused massive population declines in the Amur sturgeon.”
Both countries have heavy restrictions on the ability to fish for the Amur sturgeon, but the wildlife service said these measures are failing to help the fish population rebound.
“Since 1991, Russian state-sanctioned harvests (so-called “test fishing” or “controlled catches”), purportedly for population monitoring, have likely been used as cover for continued fishing and commercial sale,” the service said.
China’s permitting process has been equally ineffective.
“The sale of caviar and meat with mislabeled origin, species, or both makes enforcement difficult and it is very challenging for enforcement officials to confidently differentiate wild from captive-bred caviar,” the service said.
The fish have difficulty in bouncing back from population lows, partly because they take so long to mature. Males require as much as 12 years before they are able to reproduce. Females don’t begin producing eggs until they are 9 years old, but sometimes it can take as long as 14 years.
“This long time to maturity can slow the species’ recovery from disturbance, relative to that of species with shorter generation times,” the service said.
Amur sturgeon are enormous fish, with mature adults reaching 10 feet in length. They are also long-lived if allowed to pursue their natural course, with some adult fish reaching 60 years in age.
The sturgeon often migrate upstream in order to spawn, and unlike other species the conditions of the Amur River, including dams and water quality, are not thought to be primary threats to the species decline or impediments to its recovery.
The Amur River is the tenth longest in the world, beginning in the western part of Northeast China and flows east, providing the border between Russian and China. The river is believed to contain at least 123 species of fish.
The sturgeon is reputed to be the largest. Female sturgeon in the river can lay as much as 1.3 million eggs, though it is more common for them to lay eggs numbered in the 190,000 to 300,000 range. Once hatched, the survival rate for the young is about 1 in 2,000 and there is as much as 90% attrition for juveniles. They eat insects, crustaceans and other fish found in the river.
“A series of Amur sturgeon surveys conducted between 2005 and 2011are the most comprehensive, quantitative appraisal of the species we are aware of, for either contemporary or historical population estimates,” the service said. “A greater than 95 percent decline in the species abundance was estimated between 1960 and 2010.”
The species is currently listed as critically endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List.
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