Beluga Sturgeon

• It is the largest freshwater fish in the world. The biggest one ever caught weighed 1,571 kg and measured 7.2 m.
• It is one of the longest-lived vertebrates: it can live beyond a hundred years.
• Fishing has cut that longevity short. Today no individuals older than 56 years are found, because almost all are caught soon after reaching maturity.
• And that maturity comes extremely late: females do not breed until past 15 years of age, and sometimes not until their mid-twenties. A depleted population takes decades to respond.
• Its roe is beluga caviar, the most expensive in the world, and demand is what has driven the species down: overfishing, poaching and dams that cut off its access to the spawning grounds.
• Today a 500 kg specimen makes world news; the average size in the wild is under 60 kg.
• Its family, the Acipenseridae, is one of the oldest among fishes: its ancestors go back to the Early Jurassic, almost 200 million years ago.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat and environment

Anadromous: it lives in the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and the Adriatic and ascends the great rivers to spawn, further upstream than any other sturgeon

Sexual maturity

17.5 years

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Huso huso

The pins mark the parks and dive sites where its presence is documented.