At spawning time, male sturgeon move into the river first followed by the females. Spawning occurs from April-June upstream of the salt front. Individual fish have been known to travel over 900 miles to spawn.

Following spawning, female Atlantic sturgeon will move out of the river while males may remain until the fall. Female Atlantic sturgeon reach sexual maturity at 18-19 years of age when they are six to eight feet long and over 70 pounds. Males become sexually mature at 12-14 years of age, when they are 3.5 to 6.5 feet long. The oldest recorded individuals were over 60 years old.

Spawning sturgeon scatter the eggs across a wide area. The eggs are sticky and attach themselves to stones and vegetation. Following hatching, the young fish remain in freshwater for two to seven years before moving out to sea. As they grow, they feed on a variety of benthic or bottom organisms, including worms, amphipods, isopods, midge larvae, plants, and small fishes.

Atlantic sturgeon are sometimes seen basking at the water’s surface and making spectacular jumps.

Habitat and Distribution

After spending up to the seven years of life in freshwater, Atlantic sturgeon migrate out to sea to spend the rest of their lives. Only during spawning season do adult sturgeon return to large costal rivers and estuaries.

In New York, Atlantic sturgeon are generally found in the deeper portions of the Hudson River. While occasionally found as far upriver as Albany, young fish are rarely seen upstream of Hudson.

Atlantic sturgeon under six years of age stay in the brackish water where they were born before moving into the ocean. They may be 3 to 5 feet long at this stage. In areas where the Shortnose sturgeon are also present, the adults of that species can be, and historically were for centuries, confused with immature Atlantic sturgeon. Atlantic sturgeon may take anywhere from seven to twenty-three years to become sexually mature, depending on the sex and temperature of the water. When mature, they travel upstream to spawn. The females may lay 800,000 to 3.75 million eggs in a single year, doing so every two to six years. After laying their eggs females will travel back downstream, but males may remain upstream after spawning until forced to return downstream by the increasingly cold water. They may even return to the ocean, where they stay near the coastline. Sturgeon can often live to the age of sixty years old. Accounts of sturgeon over the age of one hundred were not uncommon in colonial times. The species is also known for its occasional ‘leaping’ behavior, during which the fish will emerge completely out of the water in a forceful motion that can be hazardous to anything unlucky enough to be struck. The exact reason why sturgeon leap remains unknown.^[2]

[edit] Economic history

Originally, the Atlantic sturgeon was considered a worthless fish. Its rough skin would often rip nets, keeping fishermen from catching more profitable fish. However, when products derived from the atlantic sturgeon were found, their popularity quickly rose.^{[citation needed]} Sturgeon were one of the types of fish harvested at the first North American commercial fishery, and were the first cash “crop” harvested in Jamestown, Virginia. The colonies found atlantic sturgeon to be a profitable resource, second in profit only to lobsters^{[citation needed]}. Other fisheries along the Atlantic coast harvested them for use as food, a leather material used in clothing and bookbinding, and isinglass, a gelatinous substance used in clarifying jellies, glues, wines and beer. In the late 19th century, seven million pounds of sturgeon meat was exported from the US per year. Within years, however, that amount dropped to 22,000 pounds. The number later rose to about 200,000 pounds a year in the 1950s. Now, sturgeons are primarily used for the production of caviar.

[edit] Conservation status

The U.S. government does not list the species as threatened or endangered on a nationwide level under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, the Atlantic sturgeon is a U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service Species of Concern. Species of Concern are those species about which the U.S. Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, has some concerns regarding status and threats, but for which insufficient information is available to indicate a need to list the species under the ESA. However, a new status review under the ESA has been conducted and Atlantic sturgeon are now considered candidate species.

The American Fisheries Society, however, considers the fish as threatened throughout its entire range, although it is believed to no longer inhabit the full range it once did. In the Chesapeake watershed, the James River in Virginia is one of the last confirmed holdouts for that region’s nearly extirpated population. In May 2007 a survey identified 175 sturgeon remaining in the entire river, with 15 specimens exceeding five feet.^[3] A bounty-based survey of live Atlantic sturgeon in Maryland’s portion of the Bay found “a high number of captures reported in 2005-06.^[4] http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/commercial/sturg100.htm The University of Georgia is also conducting an ongoing study on the life history of Atlantic sturgeon on the Altamaha river in Georgia.

Conservation designation

IUCN: Critically Endangered ^[7]

CITES: Appendix II

American Fisheries Society: Endangered in all stream systems except Conservation Dependent in Hudson, Delaware, and Altamaha river.