Sturgeon poachers linked to drug dealers
Federal Fisheries officers say they suspect organized crime is involved in white sturgeon poaching in the Fraser River.
Twice in the past two weeks, fisheries officers have found sturgeon – one and one dead – in marijuana grow op houses in the Lower Mainland.
Fisheries spokesperson Paul Cottrell says it's a trend that is part of a larger crime ring. "We don't have a real good handle. We get occurrences almost every week of it going on," he says.
However, he says Fisheries officers can't work overtime to catch the poachers because of cuts to enforcement budgets, noting most poachers operate after hours.
Cottrell notes the prehistoric sturgeon is a hot commodity on the black market, with the white meat selling for up six dollars a pound and the roe for even more.
Fisheries officials plan to meet with police and conservation officers in the next few weeks to devise new plans to net the sturgeon poachers.
There are fewer than 50,000 white sturgeon in the Lower Fraser, with less than two per cent of them adults capable of reproducing.
Troy Nelson of the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society says the big fish can live for 200 years and group up to six metres in length.
"It hasn't changed its general morphology for over 65 million years, the fossil record, which in our terms would make it a living dinosaur."