I live in Oregon and have been fishing for as long as I can remember. While I mostly fished for lake trout, we'd fish for salmon in the Columbia river during salmon season. During the off season (winter) I'd fish for sturgeon.

One year my buddy decided to get serious gear and fish for oversized sturgeon. This was purely catch-and-release, barbless hooks. We would sit on the edge of the shipping lanes because that was the deepest part of the river.

(incoming fisherman story)

One day we hooked a gigantic fish, we were in a 24 foot boat and I swear it was longer than that. We pulled it near the boat to unhook it and the thing was amazing! It was covered in battle scars from boat propellers or something, but the weirdest part was that it had a ton of fishing line hanging out of it's ass. Over the years it must've swallowed hooks and line, and it was just swimming around with literally feet of the stuff.

We retrieved our hook and watched it swim back into the depths. I never went oversized fishing after that, but it was incredible to think how old that fish was, what it had been through, etc.

Kayak fished the St. Croix river last year, on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin, for smallmouth bass. Crystal clear water. Floated over several huge sturgeon, 4-6 feet long. The way they look, it feels like coming across a dinosaur. Thankfully they're bottom feeders.

Wild to imagine what the PCB concentration must be in a creature like that

I feel somewhat skeptical of the methods as they were superficially described in this article. Will need to read more later. However, I also have been aware of the demise of sturgeon and I really hope we will get to see their populations return.

I know this is always an unpopular opinion but I just think we as a species should eat far fewer animals. Fish species have been really substantially negatively affected all over the planet by human activity, activities such as bottom trawling and line fishing are hugely destructive (the lines can be tens of km long!) and the whole marine ecosystem is under unique threats from climate change. We don't really know what we are killing and eating, and I am sure we will regret it later on scientifically.

I'm a lifelong plant eater and you can survive very happily, healthily, with lower carbon footprints at all stages of life with it. And if anyone says "protein" or DHA I'll talk all about the pentose phosphate pathway whilst munching linseeds.

About thirty years ago, I was canoeing on the Suwannee when a sturgeon full out of the water breached fifty feet behind us.

Nearly scared the bejeezus out of me.

And still feels like something I dreamed.

Beautiful fish. Seen it in person.

Better for the big picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huso_fulvescens Also, note the recent reclassification from Acipenser to Huso.

From the descriptions there, the article's estimate of 99% (reduction from historic population levels) is a severe underestimate.

Why don't these fish die of cancer and old age sooner?

Don't mind this, they'll definitely be fished to extinction now.

It's perhaps not intuitive but it turns out organized anglers have been a big part of rescuing various fish populations. For instance, as a member of the "Backcountry Hunters & Anglers" group me and about 20 other members hiked up the West Fork of Oak Creek in Oak Creek Canyon AZ with heavy backpack tanks filled with (formerly) endangered Apache Trout fingerlings. It was absolutely wonderful to watch the little ones swim away. Trout Unlimited has a ton of conservation efforts including habitat, which helps viability of a whole bunch of other species.

Similarly, you can read the book "People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin's Love Affair with an Ancient Fish" to learn about how the people around Lake Winnebago came together to restore the health of its native Sturgeon population.

This idea of "othering" human beings apart from the animal world might sound like the most effective way to "help" animals but humans, being complicated, don't work that way.

I couldn't care less what you eat, if it makes you happy, awesome. But there's a whole lot more going on culturally with conservation that is entwined with the evolved nature of human beings.

In the sturgeon case, part of their trouble is habitat loss for their breeding grounds. The wiki linked in another comment says that the cause there is agricultural runoff, although it's not specific if that is plant or animal farming. Being vegetarian might not help the fish much if the farming is still causing the destruction of their breeding grounds.

Seems like you think people catch lake sturgeon to eat them. This is a very rare thing these days. Sturgeon fishing is almost always catch and release. This doesn't mean there aren't any fish killed. Any catch and release is quite stressful and might kill one. But people aren't just eating them and sturgeon are quite robust. And there's certainly no commercial fishing for them like the issues with ocean/marine ecosystems you're describing.

At least in Wisconsin rivers/lakes you cannot legally keep any sturgeon with the normal fishing license. You have to pay an extra fee to keep 1 (per season). And according to the statewide Wisconsin statistics only 5 sturgeon were harvested from the St. Croix River in 2025, and a total of 58 were harvested across the entire state.

Many fish can be farmed easily.

If we continued as hunters-gatherers we'd do the same with many other animals, but we instead decided to farm them so the other species can survive.

On the other hand, there are wild boars roaming my country in numbers that should be reduced, but somehow very few people want to eat them and they're causing a problems. Bear meat is a bit more popular, but killing off excess bears is a hot topic every year. Meanwhile horse meat is more easily available over here.

People are going to have to learn to eat algae, prawns, and insect proteins.

As the eutrophication events in a warming ocean will suffocate just about everything else. Have a nice day. =3