BIG FISH, SMALL POND: Five endangered Atlantic sturgeon arrived at the New York Aquarium’s “Ocean Wonders:
populated the Empire State’s waterways. Julie Larsen Maher
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Sharks!” exhibit this month, as part of a push to educate locals about the sea creatures that formerly
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BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
Call them big fi sh in a small
pond.
Five endangered ocean
dwellers arrived at Coney Island’s
New York Aquarium
this month, just a short stretch
of sand away from their historical
home. The fi ve- to six-footlong
Atlantic sturgeon were
once so common in the Hudson
River and waters upstate that
people called them “Albany
beef,” but so many wound up
on dinner plates that the species
neared extinction. Their
presence in the aquatic zoo
will help educate New Yorkers
about the fi sh’s historical importance
and efforts to keep
them alive, according to the
Aquarium’s director.
“In past centuries, the species
was a big part of New York
State’s regional trade in sturgeon
meat and caviar,” said
Jon Forrest Dohlin, who is
also the vice president of the
Wildlife Conservation Society,
which works to preserve
land and species across the
globe. “Of course, things have
changed, and conservationists
in New York and elsewhere
are now committed to saving
this imperiled species.”
The sturgeons, which
weigh more than 120 pounds
each, now swim within the
Aquarium’s “Ocean Wonders:
Sharks!” exhibit, which is
fashioned after their native
habitat in the Hudson Canyon
ecosystem, according to
the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The slippery swimmers
arrived in the People’s Playground
from their previous
home at the Cooperative Oxford
Laboratory in Maryland,
where they were part of a
spawn-and-release program.
A ban on capturing the beasts
took effect in 1998, but the
crackdown had little effect on
their numbers, according to
the conservation group, which
notes Atlantic sturgeons have
been on the endangered-species
list since 2012 due to a
combination of overfi shing,
habitat loss, and pollution.
The fi sh are sure to stand
out from the sharks featured
in the exhibit, thanks to their
rows of bony plates, and tubelike
mouths lined with feelers
to detect prey at the bottom of
the sea. The fi sh in the exhibit
are the size of a small adult,
but other members of the species
can grow up to 14-feet long
and weigh up to 800 pounds,
according to the Conservation
society.
The sturgeons arrived at
the Aquarium at the same
time the institution received
a designation as a satellite research
facility by the federal
Fish and Wildlife Service,
which will allow it to offer educational
programming about
other endangered fi sh that
once called the Hudson home,
reps for the society said.
Fish tale
Endangered sea creatures join
Coney’s New York Aquarium