Key Issues> Biodiversity

Greetings to the Atlantic Sturgeon:

He Likes Industrial Surplus Heat and Wastewater Treatment Facilities Too

by Holger Thuss,
Executive Director of CFACT Europe

Today, we are opening this blog and it is neither about fuel prices, nor global warming.

Among ordinary people, the sturgeon is best known as the source of caviar. Its primary population exists in the Caspian Sea. That is why most caviar comes from Russia.

Only sturgeon experts know however, that once upon a time the Baltic Sea was famous for its sturgeon fishery too. For over 100 years, the fish has nearly disappeared from there.

Around 1992, when "biodiversity" became popular, activists, politicians and scientists started an expensive program to "reconstruct" populations and habitats of the European sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) in the Baltic Sea to "prevent" the fish from being ultimately extinguished.

Since then, they are dreaming of hundreds if not thousands of new jobs in a future "European" sturgeon industry, a renewed balance of fish and man - and perhaps of homegrown caviar.

Complex surveys on the living conditions of sturgeons were undertaken. An entire sturgeon farm was built off the German Baltic coast. Juvenile sturgeons were brought from France. Various rivers were explored to determine whether they could serve the European or Baltic sturgeon as spawning grounds.

In 2003, the Berlin Institute for Waters Ecology possessed 27 European sturgeons and 250.000 Euro a year to explore them.

However, the key problem could not be solved for a very long time. Acipenser sturio from France, the real "European" sturgeon, had great difficulties surviving in the Baltic. Severe deformations and losses were reported. Apparently, he refused to eat any but French seafood.

After many years of scientific sturgeon watching, genetic analysis and archeological research found out why: Curiously, the Baltic sea is not or no longer the natural habitat of the European sturgeon. As long as 1200 years ago the entire population had been pushed aside by another member of the sturgeon family, the American sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus, - most certainly due to different temperature requirements for reproduction for these species.

Since the Little Ice Age had forced the European sturgeon to move to the South, it was actually the American sturgeon, that migrated to the Baltic Sea on its own, and that was sometimes on the table of our great-grandparents until around 100 years ago.

The conclusion of this discovery was to import sturgeons from Canada. The first 20 "Atlantic" sturgeons arrived in April 2005 by plane. German politicians on all administrative levels and the media were euphoric. They presented the sturgeon purchase as the great success of the sturgeon project. Another 700, 000 Euro were added to the project by the German Federal Government.

However, the fish import was not the success it pretended to be. In early 2004, one year earlier, the Finnish paper giant StoraEnso had reported its own sturgeon project. One of its paper mills provides its "surplus heat to warm water from the River Vuoksi for an EU-funded project involving the commercial breeding of sturgeon.

The fish pools are located right next to the mill and contain some 10,000 fish, which were originally imported from Germany. The first fish have already been sold to restaurants in Finland and to Harrod's department store in London." The first caviar was announced for spring 2004.

First, it looks as if the Finns had imported those "Baltic" or "European" sturgeons from that German farm, that now focuses on American sturgeons.

Second, the European sturgeon prefers a life in the warm and clean sewage of a paper mill to a life among scientists.

Another lesson is - third - that political correctness on biodiversity is not very helpful. American sturgeons like the Baltic Sea, European sturgeons don't. It also doesn't help to call the American sturgeon "Atlantic" sturgeon to be more political correct - it's the same fish.

Fourth, it is again a private company, that secures the survival of one of the most sympathetic sea inhabitants. For this it doesn't need decades but roughly one year.

Finally, the sturgeon example shows how often prejudice prevents environmental solutions. At least for the sturgeon, industrial surplus heat and wastewater treatment facilities are just great.

Strange, isn't it??