The Long-Term Annual Datasets for Azov Sea Basin Ecosystems for 1925–2024 and Russian Sturgeon Occurrences in 2000–2024

The abundance of the Russian sturgeon population in the Sea of Azov declined many times in the XX–XXI centuries. This paper presents long-term annual and spatial occurrence datasets to create statistical and machine learning models to better understand the distribution patterns as well as biological and ecological features. The annual dataset provides annually averaged results of environmental and biotic population estimates obtained by in situ observations for 1925–2024. The spatial occurrence dataset contains raw survey observations with a bottom trawl over the period of 2000–2024. Preliminary diagnostics of the annual dataset reveal no evidence of non-stationarity or significant outliers that cannot be explained by biological parameters. The published dataset allows any researcher to perform statistical and machine learning-based analysis in order to compare and describe the population abundance or spatial occurrence of Russian sturgeon in the Sea of Azov.