Stock Photo - 09 June 2022, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Sassnitz: Christin Höhne, biologist and research assistant, at the Institute of Fisheries of the State Research Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (LFA MV), shows a sturgeon before it is released into the Baltic Sea. In Sassnitz, about 50 externally tagged Baltic sturgeon with a piece mass of 0.5-1.5 kg were released into the Baltic Sea on the same day. For this project, the Institute of Fisheries of the LFA MV received about 1.3 million EURO from the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) for a project duration of three years. Worldwide, almost all stocks of the 27 sturgeon species are highly endangered. Historically, two sturgeon species occurred in the German tributaries to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Both have experienced catastrophic population declines since the mid-19th century, caused primarily by increasing waterway construction and pollution and overexploitation of spawning fish stocks. In the Baltic Sea, the ""Baltic sturgeon"" has therefore been considered extinct since the 1970s. Photo: Stefan Sauer/dpa. - Sassnitz/Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania/Germany