Giant Prehistoric Fish Rebounding in Canada

Stu Love (left), Zeb Hogan, and an unidentified fishing guide hold a white sturgeon caught in Canada’s Fraser River on August 24, 2008.

This is the eighth story in an award-winning, continuing series on the Megafishes Project. Join National Geographic News on the trail with project leader Zeb Hogan as he tracks down the world’s largest freshwater fishes.

When dozens of white sturgeon began washing up dead on the banks of British Columbia‘s Fraser River in the mid-1990s, some feared that North America’s largest freshwater fish could be headed toward extinction.

Once plentiful in the river, the sturgeon population had dropped below 40,000, and scientists were unable to explain the die-offs of mostly female fish.

That’s when an alliance of government agencies, environmentalists, aboriginal groups, and commercial and recreational fishers came together to save the sturgeon, spurring a robust recovery of the lower Fraser River population.

Recent estimates show the population has increased to about 50,000 fish.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081112-biggest-fish.html