Extinct fish caught in Swede’s net

fishing-210409A fish that was declared extinct in the Baltic Sea more than a century ago has made a surprise reappearance in the net of a Swedish fisherman. The supposedly extinct sturgeon, which hadn’t been seen in Swedish waters since the early 1900s, was caught off the coast of Oland.

Professional fisherman Ulf Akerlund and his crew were genuinely shocked last week when they saw the 78-centimetre long sturgeon in their net filled with wriggling cod. At first Akerlund had no idea what kind of fish he had caught, so he did some research.

“I had at first no idea what it was. But we surfed around a bit on the Internet and researched in a couple of books and we found out that it was a sturgeon,” Akerlund told the news agency TT.

The 2.8-kilogram fish was lively when it was hauled into the boat. “It (the fish) seems alert because when you poke it becomes very unruly,” Akerlund commented. The Swedish Species Information Centre in Uppsala has expressed enthusiastic interest in the discovery. The sturgeon had been officially declared extinct at the turn of the 1900s due to overfishing in the Baltic Sea, but apparently at least two of them survived.

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