Such a fish was once caught in Russian rivers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In "Research on the state of fishing in Russia" 1861 reports on a beluga caught in 1827 in the lower reaches of the Volga, which weighed 1.5 tons (90 poods).

On May 11, 1922, a female weighing 1224 kg (75 poods) was caught in the Caspian Sea near the mouth of the Volga, with 667 kg per body, 288 kg per head and 146.5 kg per caviar. Once again, a female of the same size was caught in 1924.

Now only the elderly (and even then more according to the stories of their parents) remember that before the war in the Don River there were more than a hundred species of fish. And not simple. Sterlet, beluga, two-meter sturgeon were not at all uncommon.

An engraving from 1867 illustrates the fishing industry in the 19th century.

The same picture could be observed on the Don as early as the mid-1960s. Here are shots from the film of an English correspondent who was then working in the USSR:

It is not surprising that beluga caviar was then sold in the Don bazaars for three rubles per kilo (with an average salary of 80-90 rubles). What is left of all this abundance of fish there today? Hamsa and tulka?

Fishing on the Don in 1957.

British correspondents claim that the beluga shown in the frame weighed 600 pounds (270 kg)

In fact, the problem was in the construction of the Tsimlyansk hydroelectric power station. It is because of it that there was a decrease in the height of floods, the area of flooding of the floodplain and, accordingly, the area of spawning grounds. There was a problem with the passage of fish for spawning through the structures of the hydroelectric power station.

Part of the solution was provided by the fish elevator. But not all fish went there. Actually, this situation was predicted by scientists. To compensate for the damage to the fish population, a number of fish factories were built, where the artificial reproduction of valuable fish species (sturgeon, vimba, carp, pike perch, bream) was carried out. These events have had an effect. But since the late 1980s, there was no time for caring for fish.

So only memories of these fat sturgeons remained. By the way, here are a couple more fragments of British correspondents about our fish and caviar:

How black caviar was obtained on the Volga in 1960. A huge sturgeon can only be hauled ashore with a crane.

Big catch in 1938. The fisherwoman Sonya once in May pulled out a sturgeon weighing almost half a ton.

Read also: Amazing Facts About Whales

Ichthyologist's comment:

As a professional ichthyologist (Department of Ichthyology, Moscow State University), I will allow myself to comment on the article. In fact, the main reason for the sharp decline in sturgeon numbers is precisely the cascade of dams.

The point here is that sturgeons have a very pronounced phenomenon of "homming", i.e. the desire to return to spawn in the places where these fish were once born. And there are so-called "races" that do not rise to spawn at the same time. Well, let's say, one "race" spawned earlier in the Tver province, and so it started the spawning run earlier, and those "races" that spawned in the middle reaches of the Volga went to spawn later. But the fact is that more than 90% of sturgeon spawned in places that are now located above the first dam of the cascade.

Fish passages for sturgeon are practically useless, because this fish is archaic and has a very primitive nervous system. A vivid example - if you feed the fish in the same place in the aquarium, after opening the aquarium lid, they will soon develop a conditioned reflex, and will begin to swim to the feeding site as soon as the lid is opened, without even waiting for the bark to be brought in. But with sturgeons, this situation does not work - the fish will not learn and will not respond to raising the lid, and every time the aquarist introduces food, the sturgeon begins to "twist circles" around the aquarium, looking for food by smell. And even if they always feed in one place, sturgeon fish will not remember this, and each time they will search for food again.

It's the same with fish passages - the sturgeon can go to spawn only in those ways that were mastered during millions of years of evolution. Sturgeons will never use the fish ladder (well, perhaps, single specimens and purely by accident).

But there is also a downside to the coin - if all the dams are now demolished, the sturgeon population has recovered relatively quickly. Moreover, economically, it is probably more profitable to sell caviar than to supply electricity from hydroelectric power plants (which, by the way, can be replaced by nuclear power plants, without losing productivity).