The mighty 315 mile Hudson River has had many names: The North River, Manhattes, Rio de Montagne, and 'Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk' (where the waters were never still). In fact, the Hudson is not technically a river for half it's length, but rather a fiord, or estuary of the Atlantic Ocean.

History books claim that "The River of the Steep Hills," was discovered by Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524, and explored by Hendrick Hudson in 1609 who called it the "River of Mountains."

Wrong! Considering both Verrazzano and Hudson encountered a diversity of Native people during their visits, they hadn't "discovered" anything. They merely stumbled on a region that was well settled for thousands of years by Native people, the 'Muh-he ka-ne-ok' or Mohicans.

Writing in his journals, Hudson found "The river is full of fish..." "The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot upon."

Hudson for the most part enjoyed his contact and trade which included oysters, tobacco, currants, and many species of fish including "young salmon and sturgeons."

When the Dutch and later English settled permanently on Mohican lands, visitors to the region often wrote about the beauty of the river, it's contents, and shores.

Two Dutch missionaries remarked in 1679, "The North river abounds with fish of all kinds, throughout from the sea to the falls... "

When David Pieterzoon de Vries bought Staten Island in 1639 he visited Albany. He found white and blue grape vines along the river along with swans, geese, pigeons, teal, and wild geese. The numerous islands in the river "were covered with chestnuts, plum, hazel nut, and large walnuts."

In 1651, one Dutchman writing to another remarked about the abundance of cod and sturgeon in the river, "..that the sturgeon above all is in your rivers in such abundance and can be taken in such vast quantities that the Caviar could as well be manufactured there as muscovy." Sturgeon congregated at the base of the Cohoes Falls to propagate and was a sight to see according to witnesses.

Sturgeon certainly was abundant in the Hudson. At one time Albany was called Sturgeonville and Sturgeon was called "Albany Beef." Albany's citizens were called 'Surgeonites from Sturgeondom.'

Sturgeons were 4 to 8 feet long and weighed 100-450 pounds - one weighed in at 486 pounds. April to September was harvest and about 20 per day were caught, often getting about 2500 per season. 100 barrels of oil were extracted also and used for lighting and medicinal uses.

Adrian van der Donk in 1654 called the river "seer visryck," Dutch for 'very fish rich.' He also wrote, perhaps prophetically, "his attention was arrested by the Hudson, in which a painter could find rare and beautiful subjects for his brush." The Hudson River School appeared two hundred years later!

Peter Kalm in 1750 wrote "Sturgeons abound in the Hudson River. We saw them all day long leaping high up into the air, especially in the evening."

He goes to say, "where the tide stops at the Hudson there being only a small and shallows streams above it. At that place they catch a good many kinds of fish in the river."

Kalm continued with his natural history assessment, remarking on the various trees and wild grave vines "on the rising shores of the river, where some asparagus grew wild."

Herring, shad, bass, salmon and other fish were also found in abundance. In 1804, one net yielded 40,000 shad in one day. Fishing was certainly an important industry along the Hudson.

Today, shad, striped bass, herring and sturgeon still spawn in the Hudson, but you don't eat them.

Starting in 1947, wastewater discharges containing large quantities of PCBs flowed from two General Electric plants at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward into the waters and sediments of the river next to the plants. From these areas the PCBs have moved down the entire river system through natural and human-directed causes.

Recreational fishing was banned in the upper Hudson below Hudson Falls between 1976 and 1995. It's currently limited to catch and release only along this section. Fish in other areas of the Hudson are subject to consumption advisories of varying degrees due to PCB contamination.

The shortnosed sturgeon spawns in areas of contaminated sediments located immediately below the dam at Troy. PCB concentrations in fish in the Hudson have historically been detected well above the 2 ppm tolerance level recommended by the FDA. Since 1983, PCB concentrations in fish in the main trunk of the river have shown little evidence of decline.

Today, the Shortnose Sturgeon is on the Federal Endangered Species List. What about the river?