I remember one historical incident. At the beginning of the 20th century, port workers in Astrakhan went on strike because of the monotony and scarcity of food that the owner fed them. The loaders wanted to be given cabbage soup and porridge for lunch, but the greedy ship owner daily gave the men only … beluga caviar, sometimes even without bread. For comparison: a pound of pearl barley then cost 5 kopecks, a pound of black bread - 3 kopecks, but a pound of black caviar in the season of Putin was only half a kopeck.
The disappeared Tsar-fish
Nowadays, we perceive such stories only as an anecdote, although the chronicles of the late 19th century testify that in those days the Volga fish was the most common food for Russians. For example, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, making a famous trip to Sakhalin, left the following remark in his notes: “… in every tavern you will certainly find salted beluga with horseradish. How much beluga is salted in Russia! But now, as you know, the beluga fishing and the extraction of black caviar on the Volga are completely prohibited.
Meanwhile, at the dawn of the Volga hydroelectric construction, the official strategists of the socialist economy promised that after the construction of a cascade of hydroelectric power stations, there would come not only an abundance of energy, but also the fishing industry would grow many times over. Here is what the prominent Soviet hydrobiologist Vladimir Zhadin wrote on this score in 1940: "The Volga reservoirs will have to give the country up to a million centners of fish annually upon completion of the entire work plan." True, already in the 1950s, these fishing plans were halved, although in the end they turned out to be impracticable. At the end of the 20th century, only about 100 thousand centners of fish were caught in all the Volga reservoirs per year, of which sturgeons accounted for only tenths of a percent.
The construction of dams between the 1930s and 1960s dramatically reduced the number of Caspian anadromous fish in the Volga basin. Nowadays, in the waters of the Upper and Middle Volga regions, you will no longer see not only the beluga, but also its other relatives from the sturgeon family - the thorn, stellate sturgeon and Russian sturgeon. All the representatives of anadromous fish from the herring family also disappeared from here - the Volga herring, the Caspian pusan and Berg's herring.
True, the increase in the species diversity of the fauna of Russian rivers, due to … newcomers, can now be considered some consolation for ichthyologists. No, this does not mean aliens from outer space at all, the stories about which are so popular these days. We are talking about alien fish, which had never been encountered in the Volga water area before and appeared during hydro-construction. In total, almost two dozen such invaders are now known on the great Russian river. True, most of them cannot be compared with beluga in their taste.
Promotional video:
From the north and south
The invaders are divided into two groups according to the method of penetrating new places. The first includes fish species that reached the Volga basin on their own, using natural or artificial reservoirs - rivers, lakes, canals. For them, the decisive factor in resettlement was the appearance in new places of conditions favorable for their life.
For example, when the water flow on the Upper and Middle Volga slowed down due to dams, fish-invaders from Beloe Lake, which is located in the north of Russia, very soon appeared here. Belozersk vendace and smelt, as well as smelt, a small form of smelt, entered the Volga waters from there. Already in the fall of 1956, these fish began to be found near the dam of the Gorky hydroelectric power station, and in 1964 they were also found in the Kuibyshev reservoir.
And two years later, in the same waters, they caught another fish, unprecedented for these places, similar to a snake - a river eel. How did he get here? It turned out that a few years before that, millions of its larvae were released into Lake Seliger, in the Novgorod region. Thousands of kilometers along canals and a chain of reservoirs did not become an obstacle for this fish. Until now, every year in the fishing catches on the Volga, this snake-like creature is celebrated.
However, historical evidence confirms that the eel is not so unprecedented for the great Russian river. Back in 1909, academician Lev Berg noted the eel catch in the Astrakhan region, where he, as the scientist suggested, got from our northwestern rivers.
Particularly interesting is the fact that marine fish species appeared on the Volga. In an unusual way, for example, an ichthyologist discovered the Caspian needlefish in the Saratov region in 1962. Accidentally glancing into the boiling water, where the fishing brigade threw fish for fish soup, the scientist saw an unusual specimen and snatched it straight from the boiling water. This is how the needlefish first appeared on the Volga. And in subsequent years, this marine inhabitant was regularly caught in various reservoirs from Gorky to Volgograd.
By the way, it has not yet been precisely established whether the Caspian resident entered these areas on his own, climbing up the Volga, or was brought here with forage mysid crustaceans, which were released in large batches for the purpose of acclimatization into different reservoirs.
And at the end of the 1970s, in the Togliatti region, amateur fishermen began to fish with a rod, a small, bony and also hitherto unknown here fish - the Caspian round goby. In 1971, ichthyologists caught another Caspian goby in the same area - a large-headed goose. Now both of these fish are quite common inhabitants of coastal zones almost throughout the Middle and Lower Volga.
But, however, in terms of settling in new places, everyone was given a head start by another small fish - Charhal tulka. Before that, she lived in only a few small bodies of water, including Lake Charhal, in the Ural River basin. But as soon as the Volgograd reservoir was filled in 1963, the tulka quickly populated its entire water area, and then went further up the Volga up to Yaroslavl. Having firmly mastered new places, the fish quickly became so "local" that it became almost the main food of many predators - pike, pike perch, perch, catfish.
Guests from Amur and America
But smelt, vendace, needle fish, gobies and similar representatives of the underwater world came to the Volga water area themselves. Another thing is the invaders of the second group. A man helped them overcome mountains, oceans and deserts. First of all, they were aliens from the Far East.
The most common species from this group is now considered to be Amur sleeper, or firebrand, a fish from the family of perches. It was brought to St. Petersburg back in 1910 for breeding in aquariums, but soon someone accidentally released rotan into a suburban pond. Now, perhaps, there is no such reservoir in European Russia where it would be impossible to meet this Amur newcomer.
And in 1965, juveniles of another Far Eastern fish, grass carp, were released into the Volga delta, which two years later passed through the dams and reached the Middle Volga. At the same time, in the ponds of many fish farms, two other Far Eastern fish species began to be bred: common and variegated silver carp, which from here in large quantities fell into the water area of the river. Nowadays, these invaders have become fairly common inhabitants of the Volga reservoirs and other reservoirs.
By the way, the list of Volga aliens is not limited to the listed species. In the 1960s, other fish farms even bred representatives of the American fish fauna from the Buffalo genus as an experiment. Now they are also sometimes found in the Volga, albeit in single copies.
How rabbits ate Australia
Nowadays, the world's leading ecologists treat such artificial dispersal of animals and plants (in science it is called "introduction") sharply negatively, regarding such works as biological pollution of the environment.
A classic example of such an ill-considered introduction is the story of the appearance in Australia of wild rabbits, which were not found on the Green Continent before. In 1859, an unknown sailor from the "Lightning" clipper brought here from England only 24 pairs of these animals. And five years later, the rabbits were called the worst disaster ever to hit Australia. Having no natural enemies in the new place, the eared creatures began to multiply with incredible speed, destroying almost all Australian pastures in a short time.
It was possible to cope with this disaster only after a "biological weapon" was used against the rabbits - a deadly infection for them. This was one of the first cases when the ill-considered introduction of a living organism into a new habitat for it turned into an ecological disaster. Unfortunately, there are already quite a few similar facts in the history of mankind.
Valery EROFEEV