Word: sturgeon
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...purists insist that the best way to eat beluga caviar is straight off a golden or ivory spoon, followed by a shot of vodka or a sip of ice-cold champagne. For those who can afford to shell out $450 for a 125-gram tin, these precious salted sturgeon eggs are a taste of the true Western high life?a chance to indulge like the Russian czars and czarinas, who feasted regularly on fine caviar...
...Until the early 1990s, the sturgeon supply in the Caspian Sea was tightly regulated by the Soviet Union and Iran. But when the Soviet regime collapsed, so did governmental control. Today poachers supply some 300 tons of caviar per year, 10 times as much as legal traders. The temptations are great in a region where economic opportunities are scarce. In a typical bust, smugglers in the Russian county of Astrakhan managed to load an air-force cargo plane with almost 350 kilograms of sturgeon roe before it was seized by the Federal Security Service...
...Better get your last licks in soon, however. The beluga sturgeon that produce the world's best caviar are under enormous pressure from overfishing, dam building and pollution by the former Soviet republics that ring the Caspian Sea. Most species of sturgeon are in decline?some by as much as 90%?and those native to the Caspian appear doomed. Environmental groups have petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to put beluga on the endangered-species list?a move that would cut off supply to the world's largest market of consumers. (Americans swallow up to 80% of the annual...
...People are going to have to live without beluga caviar for a while if we are going to have any hope of rescuing the species," says Lisa Speer, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a spokeswoman for a sturgeon-hugging coalition that calls itself Caviar Emptor...
...Part of the problem is due to the nature of the beast. Sturgeon are ancient creatures that have swum the world's rivers and seas for millions of years. Clad in bony plates, they are fierce-looking fish that can grow to enormous lengths?measuring up to six meters from snout to tail and weighing more than a ton. But they mature slowly: some don't begin reproducing until they are 15 to 25 years old. When a female sturgeon does start ovulating, she can be quite valuable, producing more than a million eggs, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars...