Commercial exploitation PDF Print E-mail
Before the decline of the species, the European sturgeon was highly sought-after for its flesh, which was very much appreciated on a local level, and for its eggs from which the black gold of the sea, caviar, was produced.  The gelatines extracted from the fish also found a sales outlet in the agri-business and the collagen, known as isinglass, extracted from the swimbladders of the fish were used in the optics industry.
Both mythical tales and archaeological remains attest to man’s consumption of the European sturgeon as far back as Gallo-Roman times.
At the end of the 19th century, this species was fished in nearly all the countries in its historic range.  From the beginning of the 20th century, with the development of the caviar market, its commercial exploitation had considerably increased. Holcik et al. (1989) estimated annual world production of Acipenser sturio at between 150 and 200 tonnes during this period, that is approximately 14,000 to 16,000 individual specimens.  Just like the successive disappearance of populations from the Northern half of Europe, catches of European sturgeon in the North Sea and Baltic Sea dropped sharply during the first half of the 20th century.  From the 1920s, the species became less important from a commercial point of view in most of the countries in its range.
 Following the second World War, the European sturgeon was no longer fished throughout Europe as a whole, just in the Guadalquivir and Gironde basins.  Records show that in the French river an annual average of 50 tonnes of sturgeon were caught providing 3 tonnes of caviar.  Technological improvements in fishing tackle linked to the rise in motorised fishing and, later, to the use of nylon in the manufacture of fishing nets, associated with a fragmented knowledge of the species life cycle and ill-adapted regulations all contributed further to the decline of these last populations of sturgeon.
Despite the different statutory measures taken to protect the species, catches continued to decrease, tumbling from 4,000 specimens in 1947 to 195 in 1963 then further dropping to just 150 sturgeons between 1971 and 1980.  The European sturgeon has been strictly protected in France since 1982 and in Europe since 1998.
Histo_Captures_Gironde Capture_Sturio

Last Updated on Saturday, 07 November 2009 20:48