Featured Image Credit: NOAA
By Sarah Sharkey
A strange, prehistoric fish washed up on a New Jersey beach earlier this month. The creature was very interesting looking and based on the pictures, you can see why. It’s body patterns are very striking as a fish that has come from another time.
The fish was spotted by a jogger, Stephanie Hall while running near the dunes. She had this to say about the discovery, “I came head-on with it at first. It looked like a huge lizard head. I froze in my tracks because I was not expecting something that big or that strange looking.”
The Atlantic sturgeon can be found in the fossil records as far back as 200 million years. The fish has been on the planet a long time, but its population declined dramatically in the 1990s. There was a large fishery that was centered around Atlantic Sturgeon and their eggs because sturgeon caviar is a highly sought-after commodity. The fishery collapse when the population of sturgeon could no longer support it. Harvest of Atlantic sturgeon has been banned since 1998, in hopes that the species can recover. New Jersey Fish and Wildlife tags around 200 of these animals a year as they head up the Delaware River to spawn.
Learn more from our source here.