The white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus, meaning "sturgeon beyond the mountains"), also known as the Pacific sturgeon, Oregon sturgeon, Columbia sturgeon, Sacramento sturgeon, and California white sturgeon, is a sturgeon (a fish of the family Acipenseridae) which lives along the west coast of North America from the Aleutian Islands to Central California.
It is the largest freshwater fish in North America and is the third largest species of sturgeon, after the Beluga and the Kaluga. The white sturgeon is known to reach a maximum size of 816 kg (1,799 lb) and 6.1 m (20 ft).
The largest sturgeon caught on record was caught on Fraser River, in British Columbia, and weighed an estimated 1,100 pounds (498.9 kg) and measured 12 feet, 4 inches. The sturgeon was caught by Michael Snell of Salisbury, England, and was later released.
Read more about White Sturgeon: Physical Appearance, Habitat, Diet
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or sturgeon:
“Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easily born; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I can’t accept “our nervous age,” since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt; if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)