A couple of people fishing in a boat on the Fraser River were once towed around for almost an hour by a gigantic white sturgeon which had up to 100 pounds of caviar in it, and that fish finally ended up at UBC.
It happened in 1977, back when you were allowed to keep sturgeon and eat them. In 1994 the government realized the species had been decimated and initiated a retention ban, meaning you’re not allowed to keep them.
A fisher named Garnet and his wife were fishing on the river when they hooked into a 700-pound river monster, whose species happens to be the largest and longest-lived freshwater fish in North America.
To give you an idea of the size, the fish in the photo here is a 150 pound one that I caught and released. Theirs weighed more than four times that. And it was eleven feet long.
It dragged their boat around for 45 minutes then finally gave up, and for some reason instead of letting it go or keeping it to eat they kept it alive, tethered it up in the river and let it stew there for three days.
In the meantime Garnet took a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium, told them they could have it, so they sent a truck out to retrieve it.
The Aquarium built a temporary holding unit for the ancient beast, but as you can imagine the fish was under a lot of stress for days. It died not long after it got there.
It was then donated to UBC’s zoology department, who performed a number of tests on it.
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