Figure 1.Map of the Amur River System showing the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Amur River. The Ussuri River is known as
the Wusulijang, and the Sungari River is known as the Songhuajing in Chinese. The upper Amur is a portion of the river above Blagovesh-
chensk, the middle Amur extends from Blagoveshehensk to Khabarovsk,and the lower Amur extends to the mouth. Only tributaries
currently or historically important for acipenserids are shown.
sian authorities prohibited fishing of sturgeons dur-
ing the spawning period. In 1923, authorities issued
a ban on the catch of sturgeons across the USSR;
this ban was withdrawn in 1930. Three years after
the second world war in 1948, 61 metric tons of kalu-
ga and 4.2 metric tons of Amur sturgeon were
caught, i.e., the catch of kaluga was one tenth of the Materials and methods
1891 level, whereas that of the Amur sturgeon was
less than one-hundredth of the 1891 level (Svirskii Fishes were collected during government surveys of
1071). In 1958, USSR authorities banned the catch the Amur River estuary, where 30–40 tons of kaluga
of kaluga and Amur sturgeon. A ban is formally still were caught annually, as well as in the upper and
in effect. Both species are on the IUCN Red List middle reaches of the Amur River. Data on devel-
(1994), withH. dauricusconsidered rare andA. opment were obtained at the hatcheries located in
schrenckiivulnerable. the lower (1962–1968) and middle (1992–1993)
Although aspects of morphology of kaluga and reaches of the Amur River. Live fish were observed
Amur sturgeon have been described before (Berg at the Vladivostok Oceanarium. Standard methods
1948, Nikolsky 1956), the biology and population
structure of these species have not been studied ex-
tensively (but see Wei et al. 1997 this volume). This
paper describes general characteristics and the con-
temporary status of both species.