Conservation laws to protect German sturgeon

“Spawning refuges were closed for the fishery in the Oste River (a tributary of the lower Elbe River) in 1898 until 1918. This measure was applied to 7 km of the river in an area where fertilized eggs had been detected (Quantz 1903) . . . The combination of various measures was also applied in later years. On the Eider River in 1915, a series of legal protection measures were effectuated to protect the sturgeon population and to support a sustainable harvest (Mohr 1915). These included: (a) the prohibition of baited hooklines using worms as bait, (b) increased intensity of surveys to prevent marketing of sublegal (<100 cm) sturgeons, (c) improving enforcement by increasing the number of fisheries officers for the Eider River, (d) increase of the legal size limit to 150 cm TL, and e) the attempt to buy fishing rights along the river to install protection areas. Point (d) was abolished again in 1916 (Ehrenbaum 1916), and the protected areas were not established until the dam at Nordfeld was completed in 1936, which blocked the migration of the adults to the spawning sites.”