The Sturgeon was found at the Zuidlaardermeer
A large lake on the border of the provinces of Drenthe and Groningen may soon be famous in fishing circles after a giant Russian Sturgeon was found in its waters. Never before has such a fish been caught in a Northern lake. The question now is whether the fish had swum there from Russia, or whether someone had released the animal into it.
Mans Vos, from Palinghandel Vos on the Zuidlaardermeer was initially confused when he found a meter-long fish in his eel trap. “We have been fishing here for generations, me, my father and my grandfather, we have never caught a sturgeon,” he said. As reported by RTV Drenthe.
The Zuidlaardermeer is not the Sturgeon’s native habitat, says Martijn Schiphouwer of nature knowledge organization Ravon. “He must have been released into the lake. Sturgeons are kept as pond animals, and sometimes the owner thinks the sturgeon is getting too big, and releases them. Captive animals should never be released into the wild, and certainly not if they don’t originate here. These Sturgeon can also live a very long time; up to a hundred years. ”
According to Schiphouwer, the big fish can do no harm in the Zuidlaardermeer. The Russian sturgeon eats crustaceans, molluscs and small other fish and is not a threat. “It is not an invasive species, ecologically the animal has no effect”, he said.
Last summer, a fisherman in the City of Groningen also caught a Sturgeon. According to Ernst Schrijver of the ARK Nature Development Foundation, it was almost certainly not a ‘rare’ Russian sturgeon, but a native one.
Image: a juvenile Russian Sturgeon via Wikimedia user Daniel Döhne. License here.
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