[img_assist|nid=16055|title=Atlantic sturgeon|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=200|height=59]
Life's tough when your eggs sell for $250 a pound. The Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrhynchus), whose prehistoric shape you might recognize from road signs around the Hudson watershed, is now under consideration for the federal endangered species list. From a story in the Charleston Sun News:
The sturgeon was once plentiful enough to be a cash crop for the Jamestown colony in Virginia, so thick in the Hudson River in New York it was called "Albany beef" at the turn of the 20th century, when 3,000 tons per year were being netted along the East Coast. By the time a moratorium was put in place in 1998, the catch had dropped to 1 ton per year, even though the roe sold as caviar for $250 per pound.
A moratorium on fishing the Atlantic sturgeon has been in place since 1998, but populations haven't recovered. The move to list the fish comes from the National Resources Defense Council, which has petitioned the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to give it tougher protection.
