General

• "Sturgeon" is a blanket term for a number of large species of fish that are members of the scientific family Acipenseridae. They differ from most modern fish because their long bodies have rows of bony plates, known as scutes, instead of scales, and their skeletal structure is made of cartilage instead of bones. Considered bottom-feeders, sturgeon have a jaw that resembles a snout, allowing them to dig up crustaceans and smelt. Sturgeon also hunt river herrings and eat dead fish.
  
  

Habitat

• Found exclusively in the Northern Hemisphere, these primitive fish prefer cold to temperate waters and live primarily in large, freshwater lakes and rivers. Some species of sturgeon make their habitat in the coastal areas of ocean, swimming upriver once a year to spawn. Although they are in many of the larger, colder lakes and rivers of North America, sturgeon are found in more abundance in rivers in Russia and Central Asia.
  
  

Size

• Sport fishermen seek these fish because of their great size. The average length of a sturgeon is 3 feet and the average weight about 50 lb., but sturgeon have the potential to grow much larger. In February 2010, a record-breaking sturgeon was caught in Lake Winnebago; it was 7 feet long and weighed 212 lb.
  
  

Life Cycle

• Sturgeon spawn many times during their lifespan, although most do not spawn every year. Females spawn less often as they become older, but they produce a larger number of eggs each time they spawn. Growing much slower than most fish, sturgeon do not mature sexually until they are about 20 years old, but many sturgeon species can live to be as old as 100 years.
  
  

Commercial Uses

• Historically, sturgeon were considered a nuisance because they tore up commercial fishing nets. Later, though, sturgeon were sought commercially for their meat, which was dried, smoked or salted. Recently, commercial fishing of them has dropped because of the dwindling number of fish in almost all of their species. Due to the high number of eggs female sturgeon produce, often as many as 1 million eggs, females are harvested commercially for their roe, and the roe is used to make caviar. Many consider sturgeon, pound for pound, to be the most valuable fish in the world. Due to overfishing, though, most species of sturgeon are on the endangered and critically endangered species list, or at least considered vulnerable to extinction (in 2010).