According to the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (www.iucnredlist.org), almost all sturgeon species are at risk of extinction, being identified as the most endangered species in the world. The ship sturgeon (Acipenser nudiventris) is classified as critically endangered. However, unlike the rapid decline of wild populations, sturgeon farming is rapidly increasing in the China Mainland, being the country with the largest sturgeon aquaculture with a production amount of approximately 97,000 tons in 2018. This figure is greater than 80% of the total amount of aquaculture production globally. The ship sturgeon is a large sturgeon with good egg quality and high caviar price, and the controlled propagation of this species is of great significance to conservation biology and aquaculture. The ship sturgeon is the only native sturgeon species that lives in the Ili River Basin of Xinjiang in China. The wild sturgeon populations in the Ili River have sharply decreased in recent decades, similar to the decline seen in other areas. It is a national second-class protected wild animal in China and a first-class protected wild animal in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Collecting wild individuals to implement controlled propagation technology under domestic conditions is the best strategy to save this species. In this study, 13 juvenile fish were collected from the Ili River and farmed in flowing ponds for many years. Among them, two females and three males reached stage IV gonadal maturity, and the controlled reproduction, embryonic development, and fry breeding of these fish were studied. LHRH-A2 was used to successfully induce spawning and insemination, and 120,000 eggs were collected. The fertilization rate was about 50%. Under the incubation conditions of 15–17 ℃, the larvae hatched for approximately 5–7 d, and more than 25200 newly hatched larvae were obtained, with a survival rate of 42%. The successful controlled propagation of A. nudiventris in the Ili River has laid a solid foundation of technology and experimental materials for conservation and population retrieval.