Atyrau Sturgeon

About the Sturgeon

Atyrau is a city in western Kazakhstan on the Ural River, a few dozen kilometres above its mouth on the Caspian Sea. Known as Guryev until 1992, it grew as a fishing town and is now the centre of the country's oil industry. The Ural is one of the main spawning rivers of Caspian sturgeon, and the fish and its black caviar long defined Atyrau's economy and reputation.

Atyrau grew out of the sturgeon trade. A wooden fort was raised at the mouth of the Yaik, today's Ural, in the first half of the seventeenth century to guard the fisheries; sources give dates from 1615 to 1645. The merchant Guryev family, who held fishing rights there, rebuilt it in stone between 1647 and 1662, and the town carried their name, Guryev, from 1708 until 1992, when it took the Kazakh name Atyrau, "river delta". Beluga, Russian and stellate sturgeon run up the Ural to spawn; the river is often described as the last in the Caspian basin with natural spawning grounds for all of them, and for centuries the town's black caviar was its most valuable export. Overfishing and poaching collapsed the stocks; commercial sturgeon fishing is now banned, and the Atyrau Sturgeon Hatchery releases millions of juveniles each year. The city's emblem shows two sturgeons and an oil rig.