EnvironmentalBiology of Fishes 48 : 257–264, 1997.
© 1997 KluwerAcademicPublishers.Printedin the Netherlands.
Biology and life history of Dabry’s sturgeon, Acipenser dabryanus, in the
Yangtze RiverPing Zhuang, Fu’en Ke, Qiwei Wei, Xuefu He^1 & Yuji Cen
Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Shashi, Hubei, 434000,
China(^1) Department of Biology, Southwest Normal University, Chongqing, Sichuan, 630715, China
Received2.8.1994 Accepted 11.3.1996
Key words:Gezhouba dam, population size, conservation
Synopsis
Dabry’s sturgeon,Acipenser dabryanus, is a relatively small (130 cm, 16 kg) and now rare sturgeon restricted to
the Yangtze River Basin. It behaves as a resident freshwater fish, does not undertake long distance migrations
(except for spawning), and lives in a variety of habitats. It historically spawned in the upper Yangtze River, but
the spawning sites are unknown.Acipenserdabryanusreaches maturity earlier than do other Chinese stur-
geons, which gives the species aquaculture potential, and artificial spawning has been carried out. However,
the native population in the Yangtze has sharply declined in the last two decades due to overfishing, pollution
and habitat alteration and destruction, especially since the construction of the Gezhouba Dam, which was
built in 1981 across the Yangtze River at Yichang, Hubei Province. Since 1981, Dabry’s sturgeon rarely occurs
below the Gezhouba Dam because downstream movements are blocked. Clearly, conservation of Dabry’s
sturgeon must be emphasized. Conservation methods may include protecting habitats, controlling capture
and stock replenishment.
Introduction
Dabry’s sturgeon,Acipenser dabryanus,is one of
two species of acipenserids found in the Yangtze (=
Changjiang) River, China. The second species is the
Chinese sturgeon,A. sinensis.More than a thou-
sand years before the Christian era, external anato-
my, general habits and characteristics, fishing meth-
ods and supposed medicinal value of sturgeons
were described in ancient Chinese literature. How-
ever, the two species of sturgeons in the Yangtze
River were not scientifically distinguished until the
middle of the 19th century.Acipenser dabryanus
was described by Duméril (1868) based on a type
specimen collected from the Yangtze River by M.
Dabry and now kept in the Museum National
D’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France (Zhang et al.
1993). Gunther (1873), Wu (1930), Nichols (1943),
Wu et al. (1963), and Fu et al. (1988) subsequently
studied the morphology of this species using addi-
tional specimens from the Yangtze River. Until the
1960s, there was some taxonomic confusion be-
tween Dabry’s sturgeon and Chinese sturgeon
(Zhu et al. 1963, Wu et al. 1963). Now, we accept that
Dabry’s sturgeon is a freshwater species restricted
to the Yangtze River, whereas the Chinese sturgeon
is an anadromous species that inhabits both the
Yangtze and Pearl rivers (see Wei et al. 1997 this vol-
ume for data on the Chinese sturgeon,A. sinensis).
Dabry’s sturgeon is also called the Yangtze stur-
geon, Changjiang sturgeon or river sturgeon, and it
was an important commercial fish in the middle and