05:00, 15 August 2009

Precious fish species saved from extinction in Volgograd Region

One hundred thousand hutchlings of vyrezub – a fish from the Red Book of Russia were let out into the Medveditsa River, Volgograd Region. Scientists not only managed to save the precious species from disappearance, but also to learn to farm vyrezub in ponds. Until now, it was believed that vyrezub cannot be reared by fish-farms.

The peculiarity of the species is that it spawns in the current only, at optimum temperature (about 17°C) and in the presence of pebbly bottom. The fish farmers of the Volgograd Region have managed, for the first time, to do without catching adult fishes before spawning, but to hold the whole cycle of fertilisation and spawning in artificial conditions.

Now, Russia has only a couple of habitats of vyrezub. In the territory of the Volgograd Region, these are the Tsimliansk water body, the Don River and its inflows – Medveditsa and Khopyor.

Author: Vyacheslav Yaschenko

Source: CK correspondent