The Case for Caviar
People who consume caviar are usually considered “rich” or “having class.” How did this come to be? Did a royal chef somewhere run out of ideas and present this as an exotic new food and just get lucky? Actually, sturgeons, belonging to the family of Acipenseridae, were extremely abundant and easy to catch. Because they are also benthic, meaning bottom feeders, their meat and eggs was considered peasant food. In the early 1900s, caviar was actually served for free in American bars because of its salty taste to help sell more drinks.
The American species of sturgeons quickly became overfished at the same time that people were learning of the long amount of time necessary to harvest the caviar. This switched the eggs from being peasant food to part of “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” The Caspian Sea was home to the Beluga sturgeon, the most sought after caviar. In the 1940s – 1950s, the Russians began initiatives to enhance the carrying capacity of the Caspian Sea for Belugas by introducing more biomass for them to feed on. This increased the population until the late 1980s, when the population dropped, and continued to drop. Russia banned commercial fishing of sturgeons over 10 years ago to help repopulate the species; but the black market for caviar rivals that of the drug dealers. Demand for Beluga caviar is strong across the globe and the price can range from $7,000 – $10,000 per kilogram.
Luckily for all of the caviar-lover’s out there, the Acipenseridae family also houses the Paddlefish. Once Americans realized that the Paddlefish caviar was just as good as the sturgeon caviar, the fishermen went wild. Once again, the Paddlefish were abundant in many of the waterways and were easy to catch. This made the Paddlefish caviar much cheaper, around $700 – $2500 per kilogram. By 1990, the American Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) was on the verge of local extinction in many areas of the United States. Some states took action and began putting limitations on commercial fishing and began reintroduction programs to help the populations.
The Paddlefish is now listed as a Threatened species in Ohio, which means that all commercial and recreational fishing is prohibited. Even with this listing in Ohio and other states such as West Virginia, the population is still declining. How is this possible? For one thing, the Ohio river is not only in Ohio and Kentucky does not recognize the threatened status of the Paddlefish. So theoretically, you could catch all of the Paddlefish that you wanted to and claim the catch in Kentucky and it would be ‘legal.’ The second problem is that fish don’t have to stay in the state that they are protected, since the waterways are connected. The last major problem is that even though they may be protected from fishing, they are not protected from habitat fragmentation by dams and toxic waterways from pollutants.
Why care so much about the Paddlefish? Other species are suffering from overfishing and habitat fragmentation too, so why do the Paddlefish deserve our attention? There are two main answers to this. The first is that this species takes ten years to mature. That means that if a nine-year-old fish is accidently caught and killed, its life was wasted because it was not even able to reproduce. The second reason is that this species is a living dinosaur…they swam on this planet 75 million years ago! We cannot let this fish go extinct because we have to fulfill our caviar dreams.
So, what can we do? You can start by not eating caviar, but if you must, make sure that it is from a farm raised establishment that has been certified. Renee and Keith Koerner run Big Fish Farms outside of Cincinnati, where they raise and harvest their Paddlefish in the only sustainable fishery. By using farmed Paddlefish, this lets the wild populations regenerate, hopefully. There is some worry that the Paddlefish are going “the way of the buffalo” since they have been extirpated from much of the western United States. Reintroduction is an option, but it can be costly and time consuming, given they will not be able to sustain their own levels until at least ten years afterward. In South Dakota, they recently released 79,000 paddlefish into two of their lakes. For this fishing community in Southeast South Dakota, they are committed to bringing back their Paddlefish population for the health of their waterways and for recreation. However, the black market for caviar does not seem to be going anywhere, as Missouri has been named the “caviar smuggling capital.” To battle the illegal catch of paddlefish on a civilian level is simply to just “see something, say something.” This action is more helpful than most people think and can be helpful in saving the species.
So to recap, if you…
- don’t eat caviar/only eat farmed caviar
- release any accidental paddlefish caught
- see illegal fishing and say something
Then you help bring back a living dinosaur from the edge of extinction! If you want to do more with reintroduction efforts and volunteer work with Paddlefish, contact your local Department of Natural Resources office and ask for more information. Needs and strategies vary among states and regions.
Billard, Roland and Guillaume Lecointre. (2001). Biology and conservation of sturgeon and paddlefish. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 10:355-392
Campbell, Polly. (2017, March 21). Cincy caviar ranchers bringing indulgence to your plate. The Enquirer, Retrieved from http://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/dining/2017/03/21/cincy-caviar-ranchers-bringing-indulgence-your-plate/98260684/
Cooper, Katherine. (2016, March 30). Why the Caviar-Producing American Paddlefish Is a Symbol of Luxury and Scarcity. Kansas City Star, Retrieved from https://www.eater.com/2016/3/30/11250870/american-paddlefish-caviar
Preston, Geoff. (2017, Sep 14). Over 79,000 paddlefish released in Lake Francis Case and Lake Sharpe. Rapid City Journal, Retrieved from http://rapidcityjournal.com/sports/over-paddlefish-released-in-lake-francis-case-and-lake-sharpe/article_9ae66c0e-25ad-50b3-92de-a3c607ee6d30.html
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Zabyelina, Yuliya G. (2014). The “fishy” business: a qualitative analysis of the illicit market in black caviar. Trends in Organized Crime 17:181-198