This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Just a few centimeters long, slimy and covered in razor-sharp spines, baby sturgeons look like creatures from one of the Alien movies. But for the people who pull them from the river, these diminutive ugly ducklings of the fish world are a beautiful sight.
All but four of the world's 27 sturgeon species are dangerously close to extinction. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, they are more critically endangered than any other group of species on Earth. Sturgeons were once widespread throughout all of Europe's major rivers.
Sadly, they have been virtually wiped out by a combination of overharvesting, poaching and the loss of traditional spawning grounds. Georgia's Rioni River is one of their last three remaining refuges on the continent. Since 2017, Fauna & Flora has been working to reverse the decline of the four—possibly five—critically endangered sturgeon species still clinging to survival in the Rioni.
Early in 2018, as part of a pilot project, we conducted baseline studies—the very first for Georgia's sturgeons—and set about combating the threats to their survival, in particular poaching and illegal trade. At the time, very little was known about the status of this sturgeon population compared with those in the Danube and Garonne rivers. There was even uncertainty about whether these fish were still reproducing in the Rioni at all.
That question has since been answered with a resounding yes. The first evidence of recent reproductive success came during that first pilot, when we caught a tiny juvenile fish. It was identified as a critically endangered stellate sturgeon—named for the starlike markings on the flanks of the adult fish.
Discovering this miniature marvel was the aquatic equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. The captured juvenile was a pocket-sized symbol of hope for the future of these magnificent, mysterious fish. Other dramatic discoveries soon followed.
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