Historical biomass and sustainable harvest of Great Lakes lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque, 1817)

Historical abundance and biomasss of lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque, 1817) in the Great Lakes were estimated from historical commercial harvest data from 1879 to 1920 using two modeling techniques: a surplus production model with a Bayesian approach, and a depletion model. In addition, theoretical sustainable levels of exploitation and temporal recovery periods were estimated based on the surplus production model. The historical biomass of Lake Sturgeon in the Great Lakes during the period from 1879 to 1885 varied for each model and ranged from 313900 to 6473000kg (0.5-16.7kgha(-1)) using the surplus production model to 968000 to 25414000kg (2.4-31.7kgha(-1)) using the depletion model. The intrinsic population growth rate as determined from the surplus production model ranged from 0.079 to 0.123, and the theoretical sustainable exploitation rate ranged from 2.0 to 3.1%. The predicted recovery period for the overexploited populations was in excess of 60years given recruitment assuming all other impediments to population recovery were removed.