Stock status of Persian Sturgeon (Acipenser persicus Borodin, 1897) along the Iranian coast of the Caspian Sea

Persian Sturgeon (Acipenser persicus) is a bottom dweller occurring primarily on sand bottoms in the central and southern Caspian Sea, especially along the shores of Iran (Persia).In recent years, Persian sturgeon comprises the largest proportion of the total Iranian commercial catch (Moghim et al., 2003).The present study tries to evaluate some of the biological characteristics and population dynamics of this species in the Iranian coastal region by using three different data collection series: (a) commercial catch data, (b) bottom trawl surveys and (c) by-catch of juvenile sturgeons in beach seines.While most of the Caspian Sea sturgeon populations are imperiled, relative abundance indices (expressed by CPUE values) for Persian sturgeon by gillnet fisheries, trawl and beach seines catch analysis showed that the Persian sturgeon population seem to be farily stable and, after the collapse in the 1970's, has shown some slight increase in population size over the last three decades.