Beluga Sturgeon

The beluga sturgeon is a large, long-lived fish native to the Caspian, Black and Adriatic Sea basins, considered among the largest freshwater fish in the world, with historical records of individuals reaching over five metres in length and well over a thousand kilograms in weight, though such giants are now exceptionally rare. It has a shark-like body shape with rows of bony plates called scutes along its flanks rather than typical fish scales, and, like other sturgeon, an elongated snout and a toothless, tube-like mouth used to suck up prey such as fish and invertebrates from the riverbed and seafloor. Beluga sturgeon are anadromous, migrating from the sea into large rivers such as the Volga and Danube to spawn, and they can live for many decades, taking a very long time to reach sexual maturity, sometimes twenty years or more. The species has been pushed to the brink by centuries of intense fishing for its extremely valuable roe, sold as beluga caviar, combined with dam construction that has blocked access to its historic spawning rivers, and it is now classified as critically endangered.