Sturgeon sighting — the first here in decades

Irish Examiner

21-07-2025

Sturgeon are enormous fish. Exceptional specimens can grow to be six metres long and weigh as much as 400kg, which is as heavy as an average horse. They can live to be 100 years old or more. Most European sturgeon would grow to a more reasonable two or three metres long. And last week, a sturgeon was caught by an Irish trawler near Valencia Island off the coast of Kerry. In among a net load of white fish, the skipper recognised it as a sturgeon, photographed and measured it, then released it back in to the sea. The fish was 180cm long — as long as I am tall. Another was seen nearby, swimming ahead of the net.
The astonishing thing about this is that sturgeon are considered extinct in Irish waters. The last confirmed sighting of sturgeon here was in 1987, in the Irish Sea. Before that, they were a regular occurrence in Irish coastal waters and the larger rivers... a top predator of aquatic ecosystems since long before humans ever arrived on the scene. In a classic case of 'shifting baseline syndrome', these impressive fish have become extinct in very recent times, yet we have already forgotten they were ever here in the first place.
Media coverage of a sturgeon caught in Kerry in April 1966. Left to right: Cork Examiner, April 4; Irish Press, April 5; Kerryman, April 9, 1966
The first I learned about sturgeon was in the context of early hunter gatherers across Europe and Asia. These palaeolithic people thrived by making expert use of the living resources available to them. Several species of sturgeon, all enormous fish, were a valuable resource indeed. Their eggs, now known as caviar, could be harvested from females without harming the fish. The flesh of a large sturgeon could feed a clan, as well as being preserved by smoking and drying. Their skin was cured and used to make shimmering, silver-coloured clothing.
An Atlantic sturgeon
But sturgeon go back a lot longer in history than even the palaeolithic period. In fact, sturgeon were among the largest inhabitants of freshwater ecosystems as long as 150 million years ago. In more recent history, we know that the monks at Clonmacnoise caught and ate sturgeon from the River Shannon in the the 6th and 7th centuries onwards. Sturgeon also swam up the Boyne, the Barrow, the Suir and the Blackwater, with records showing that they were common in Irish inshore waters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries too.
Like salmon, sturgeon are migratory. Much of their lives are spent out at sea, feeding on fish and crustaceans. When its time to spawn, from March through August, they swim up into freshwater rivers. The full moon in August is known as the 'sturgeon moon', when sturgeon were traditionally caught across Europe and North America in freshwater lakes and rivers.
A fisherman stands next to his boat that is filled with sturgeon by the Volga River in Astrakhan, Russia. Picture: Robert Nickelsberg / Liaison
After millions of years roaming freely through both freshwater and marine habitats, these ecological icons are now critically endangered, on the verge of disappearing forever. Having been celebrated for as long as humans have existed, and harvested for millennia at sustainable levels, these resilient fish were not able to withstand the might of 20th century trawlers. Their demise has come about as a result of too many fish being caught in commercial fisheries, the same activity that has contributed to the collapse of Atlantic salmon, cod, herring and whiting during the 1980s and 90s. Because sturgeon take more than a decade to reach sexual maturity, impacted populations are unable to recover quickly, making them exceptionally vulnerable to overfishing.
Another issue that impacts sturgeon is when their access to spawning habitats is blocked off by damns and weirs, depriving them of the opportunity to reproduce. The main threats to their existence now are officially cited as fisheries bycatch in commercial benthic trawls; degradation of both freshwater and marine habitats; and pollution.
Today, the species known as European sturgeon, one of many related sturgeon species across the world, is still swimming about European waters, virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, though much diminished in abundance. It is thought that there are only about 50 wild adult European sturgeon left.
But because these are such an iconic species, and listed in the annexes of the European Habitats Directive, reintroductions from captive breeding programmes have gotten underway in Germany, Poland and France. Recovery measures in the Gironde-Garonne-Dordogne rivers in France between 1995 and 2015 have resulted in more than 1.6 million juveniles being released in to the wild. Between 2007 and 2015, approximately 20,000 captive bred individuals were released in to the Elbe River in Germany.
Irish Examiner, February 17, 2012 Rare fish causes stir in Dingle
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the first returning fish from the releases have been observed entering the river since 2021. It is as yet unknown whether these reintroductions have been successful in reestablishing wild populations.
In 2023, the Irish Wildlife Trust together with the Blue Marine Foundation published a report detailing the history of sturgeon here and the potential for reintroduction. They have been calling on the Government to be actively involved in Europe wide initiatives to save sturgeon from extinction. Now that two sturgeon have been recorded so close to the Kerry coast, it may be time for this call to action to be taken more seriously.
Under the EU Habitats Directive, Ireland is obliged to assess the feasibility of reintroducing sturgeon here. The measures needed to facilitate a successful reintroduction would include improvements to water quality, as spawning habitats have been clogged up with silt and deprived of essential oxygen due to excess nutrients from intensive agriculture. Barriers to migration would also need to be addressed, giving sturgeon, along with wild Atlantic salmon and European eel, free passage to navigate upstream to their natal spawning grounds. A cohesive network of marine protected areas (MPAs) would be needed too, protection that could give marine ecosystems a chance to recover.
If all of this sounds like a major effort, it would be. State agencies, scientists, fishers, farmers, and conservation groups would all be required to participate proactively. Restoring rivers and coastal habitats to a state in which they could once again sustain viable populations of salmon and sturgeon is within reach. The benefits of embarking on ambitious ecosystem scale ecological restoration would be far-reaching.