Chinese Sturgeon museum is part of the Chinese Sturgeon Garden located in the Xiaoxita Town in the Yichang of the Hubei Province. This museum was set up in the year 1993 by the Chinese Sturgeon research institute. This institute aims at preserving the rare species of Chinese Sturgeon which includes the 27 species of sturgeon that is still exiting in the world.
Chinese Sturgeon Museum
Chinese sturgeon is also known as the Green Sturgeon which is a kind of migration fish. It lived on earth about 140 million years and the Chinese sturgeon is one of the oldest vertebrate between chondrichthian and bony fish. In this case, the Chinese Sturgeon is also called as the living fossils. Chinese sturgeon is the king of freshwater fish for it lives the longest and is the largest. An adult sturgeon weighs more than 200 Kilograms and it is about 4 meters or 13 feet long. A mature Chinese sturgeon, over the age 14 years for the female sturgeon can lay nearly 0.3 to 1.3 million egg at a time. However, more than 90% of these eggs become the food for the other fish like yellow cartfish and bronze gudgeon. So, the considerable reduction in the number of this specie makes it highly prized variety of the Chinese sturgeon.
Chinese Sturgeon in China is mainly distributed over the trunk stream of River Yangtze. From summer to autumn every year, a school of Chinese sturgeon migrates to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River from the shallow sea area out of the estuary of Yangtze River and lay eggs in their hometown. However, since the Gezhouba Water Conservancy Project was build in the year 1980, the migration of Chinese Sturgeon route has been obstructed by the dam. Therefore, the Chinese sturgeons have lost their spawning area for the reproduction of offspring which has put their survival at risk. However, efforts are being made for their conservation.