Fish reproduction in Russia ahead of schedule
More specifically, last year the total volume of fry and larvae of valuable fish and other aquatic species released to the national water bodies amounted to 9.674 billion individuals against the plan of 9.058 billion fish.
The above volume included 484 million salmons released into the national waters, 6% up on the planned volume. The volume of young pike perch, wild carp, bream, vobla and taran released from spawning grounds of the Volga-Caspian Sea and the Azov-Black Sea Basins in 2010 exceeded 8.5 billion fish, which made a big contribution into the harvest in Russia's south fisheries region.
Sturgeons
At the same time, the sturgeon reproduction schedule in 2010 was covered only at 67% with the total volume released to the waters of the nation's South Federal District and Siberia amounting to 52 million sturgeons. Nevertheless, it exceeded the result of 2009 by 14 million sturgeons.
Sturgeon nurseries subordinate to Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency have so far remained not fully loaded due to the lack of sturgeon producers.
Coregonus whitefish
Due to a reduction of the federal budget support, the volume of Coregonus whitefish juveniles released into the natural habitat in 2010 decreased by 600 million to 334 million.
State support
According to Russia's fishery industry head Andrey Krainy, diminishing reproduction of sturgeon and whitefish could be explained by two main reasons. First was strengthening anthropogenic influence on commercial stocks. Pollution of water bodies and waterpower engineering do not let scarce fish to reproduce in normal scale thus resulting into a lack of producers fit for artificial reproduction.
The second negative factor was a reduction of budget funding for Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency in 2010. Therefore, it was really a challenge to maintain total volumes of artificial reproduction at the level of 2009.
In the above situation the nation's Federal Fisheries Agency had to support artificial reproduction of fish species out of its compensation funds which helped the farmers additionally release some 162 million fry and larvae into the natural waters.
At present there are 103 fish reproduction plants subordinate to the State Fisheries Agency. They annually release more than 9 billion fry and larvae of various fish species into the national water bodies.