BAKU, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- All participants of the 32nd meeting of the Commission on Caspian Aquatic Bioresources, which opened in Baku Wednesday, expressed concern over the Caspian sturgeon stocks and agreed to take further steps to boost its recovery.

As local media reports,a moratorium on commercial sturgeon fishing and determination of quotas for 2012 are main topics of the three-day meeting, which drew environmental ministers and experts from 5 Caspian litoral countries, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

Deputy Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan Rauf Hajiyev said at the opening of the meeting that recovery of the unique stocks of the Caspian sturgeon can be achieved only by combining the efforts of all Caspian countries, describing current state of sturgeon stocks in the Caspian Sea as "critical".

"It has been a long overdue for a total ban on commercial fishing. The imposition of a 5-10 year moratorium on sturgeon fishing will halt the decline in populations of valuable species of fish, and create conditions for their recovery," said Hajiyev.

He recalled that in 1979 Azerbaijan had unilaterally imposed a ban on commercial fishing of barbel sturgeon and in 2009 on the commercial fishing of beluga sturgeon.

Deputy director of Azerbaijani Fishery Institute Tariyel Mammadli said that the number of sturgeons had reduced by approximately ten times in the past ten years.

He said that the agreement banning the hunting of sturgeons in the Caspian Sea can be signed within a month.

Addressing the meeting, Ali Asghar Mojahedi, director of Iran' s fisheries organization, Shilat, said that Tehran supports a five- year moratorium on commercial fishing. He said Iran stopped catching sturgeon in 2011 despite its 400-tone quota.

Kazakhstan proposed a ten-year moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea.

"The calculations made by our scientists show that the population of sturgeon fishes will rise by more than 10 million, if sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea is suspended for ten years," said Bauyrzhan Zhumazhanov, chairman of the fisheries committee at the Kazakhstan Agriculture Ministry.

At present Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan hold one-year moratorium on sturgeon fishing.

The Caspian region is one of the most important areas for sturgeon, and is home to the six species which collectively provide more than 90 percent of the world's caviar production.

For decades the Caspian sturgeon has been over-fished for its profitable caviar. A kilogram of Caspian sturgeon caviar can cost more than 1,000 U.S. dollars on European markets. The litoral countries worry that illegal over-fishing can permanently destroying the caviar industry.

The Commission on Caspian Aquatic Bioresources was established in 1992 by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan.