July 20, 2012 – A first-ever assessment of the endangered East Coast Atlantic sturgeon population could be ordered by Congress with legislation that had its first hearing Thursday in Washington.
A federal declaration that Atlantic sturgeon must be protected under the Endangered Species Act has the fishing industry scrambling for ways to avoid accidental capture of the fish, often found off New Jersey during their migrations to spawning grounds in the Hudson and Delaware rivers.
“The sturgeon listing took a lot of people by surprise,” said Tom Dempsey, policy director at the Cape Cod Hook Fishermen’s Association in Chatham, Mass., whose captains often fish the same areas as their New Jersey counterparts. “We’re impacted primarily in the winter gillnet fisheries for monkfish and skate.”
“I think we need a full-blown assessment of the stock right away,” he said.
Reps. Frank Pallone, D-NJ, and Jon Runyan, R-N.J., are sponsors of bill HR-6096 that received its first hearing before the House natural resources subcommittee. Among its several measures dealing with ocean fish that spawn in freshwater rivers, the bill would require the government to conduct a sturgeon stock assessment by September 2013 to accurately gauge the population size and condition.
Overfishing and pollution decimated big sturgeon populations like that of the Delaware River and bay, estimated to have numbered 700,000 animals in the 1800s. The Delaware for some years was the world’s biggest producer of caviar and sturgeon meat until the population plunged.
Next week, state regulators meeting in Baltimore will examine the estimates and assumptions that went into the endangered species listing. One of the uncertainties is the size of the surviving population, which some researchers have estimated at as little as 500 animals.
Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press.