Economic comparison between Sturgeon fishery yield and releasing efforts of fingerlings in the Southern Caspian Sea (1972-2003)

According to available information, Iranian Fisheries Organization (IFO) has produced around 6389 tones Caviar and 44300 tones fish meats from wild Sturgeons, during 1972-2003 (figure 1&2). Also at the same time, the number of releasing Sturgeon fingerlings was produced by artificial propagation, have reached more than 20 millions per year. The economic value of exploitation and number of releasing fish show 8.5 percent increasingly trends in past 32 years. Concerning valuable scientific references and attention to the weight of fingerling fish at the releasing time, also our experiences we supposed the rate of recruitment for Huso huso 0.5 % and the others 0.3 % (Acipenser persicus; Acipenser nudiventris; Acipenser gueldenstaedtii and Acipenser stellatus). More over on the base of recruitment and the fish that have had the chance to return, amount of meat and Caviar is calculated for different species, as a result of releasing fries into the rivers and expectation recapture of them. Finally according to the 2003 prices we computed the economical value, proportionate to the different species and grading (Caviar was graded to 1,2,3 and pressCaviar). Also the base of biological factors, such as amount of Caviar, weight average and percentage of different species and etc, was calculated according to data average in past ten years.