Caviar Clash

ON THE MISSOURI RIVER, Dec. 16, 2003


If the weather's just right, Craig Gemming can drop a net in the Missouri River and return a day later to find dozens of shovelnose sturgeon tangled inside.

But he fears the day will come - perhaps soon - when he won't be able to find one no matter how many nets he drops.

Gemming, who releases the fish after he counts them, leads Missouri's effort to preserve the shovelnose and two other species of sturgeon. He's witnessed a marked increase in the commercial fishing of shovelnose over the past few years.

Conservationists say the eggs from a female shovelnose have been targeted as a replacement for caviar from a shrinking beluga sturgeon population in the Caspian Sea. Caviar from shovelnose eggs sells for hundreds of dollars per pound.

Sturgeon fishing spiked in Missouri during the 1980s, when embargoes and poor relations with the Soviet Union and Iran restricted the flow of top-notch beluga caviar from the Caspian and Black seas.

But it slowed in America after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, clearing the way for increased fishing in the Caspian. As the numbers of sturgeon plummeted there, there was a jump in the numbers taken in Missouri.

According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, commercial anglers on the Mississippi River have taken an average of about 6,300 pounds of sturgeon per year between 1945 and the turn of the century. In 2000, anglers reported taking 17,500 pounds of sturgeon. The next year, it was up to 65,128 pounds.

Statistics from the Missouri River show a similar trend. After a boom in the early 1990s, sturgeon taken fell as low as 717 pounds in 1994. By 2001, more than 12,000 pounds of sturgeon were taken.

Rachel Collins, vice president of Chicago-based Collins Caviar Co., believes the numbers lie. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks two years ago, Collins says, the caviar industry has hardly been booming.

"High-end food has really struggled," she says.

She blames the increased numbers on more accurate reporting by commercial anglers, who used to dodge taxes by saying they caught less fish than were in their nets.

In the past two years, Collins says, most caviar companies have had to reorganize, merge or fold. Her company sells shovelnose sturgeon caviar in one-ounce containers for $38 or 6½-ounce containers for $160.

"It's considered premier American caviar," Collins says, adding that some caviar connoisseurs insist American caviar is inferior to imported caviar, but the quality is subject to a person's taste.

Good shovelnose caviar has a light, clean taste with a buttery or nutty finish, she says.

Few of the company's sturgeon come from Missouri because the state is known for its "extremely strict" regulations. Collins Caviar fishermen report that rivers are teeming with plenty of sturgeon.

"They're not impacting the population, which is the usual argument from government agencies," Collins says. "That's really not the case."

Conservationists say the caviar trade also poses a risk for Missouri's two other sturgeon species - the pallid and lake sturgeon.

The pallid sturgeon is on the federal government's endangered species list and the lake sturgeon is considered endangered in Missouri. The state considers the shovelnose vulnerable - at the rate it is being fished, it could easily become endangered.

The three species are differentiated easily by their snout shape and the positioning of whisker-like barbells near the fish's mouth.

Experienced anglers can tell the fish apart.

"These guys know the difference between the fish, and they don't take them because the last thing they need is to have an agent give them a surprise visit and have pallid sturgeon in their nets," Collins said.

Sturgeon are of little commercial value beyond harvesting their eggs for caviar, said Vince Travnichek of the Missouri Department of Conservation. Smoked sturgeon meat sells for about 35 cents a pound, he said.

"The money's in the caviar," Travnichek said.

David Hendrix, manager of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery in southwest Missouri, is part of the effort to breed and restock sturgeon in the Missouri River. Hendrix and his co-workers in October released 2,400 pallid sturgeon evenly between Boonville, Mo., Vermillion, S.D., and Bellevue, Neb. The hatchery is preparing for its next class of the endangered fish.

The hatchery's goal is to help remove pallid sturgeon from the endangered species list. But before that can happen, biologists must find pallid sturgeon ready to breed. Most sturgeon don't become sexually mature until they are about 15 years old.

And because caviar is made of fish eggs, only mature females are targeted. Or, as Gemming points out, the only fish taken are those ready to reproduce. That makes it even more difficult to naturally maintain the sturgeon population.

Missouri conservation officials found only six pallid sturgeon in 2001 and five last year.

Hendrix's hatchery released 1,000 pallid sturgeon nationwide last year. He hopes it will be able to raise 4,000 or more next year.

To protect the fish that are released, Gemming says conservation and wildlife agents are checking fish markets more frequently to look for endangered species hidden among legal fish. The conservation department is also requiring more thorough reporting of the kinds of fish that are being caught.

Thanks, Erich Sollboeck, for the contribution .

J.K.

PRESS RELEASE

CITES authorizes 2003 caviar quotas as Caspian Sea
sturgeon stocks start to recover

Geneva, 5 September 2003 – The Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has approved quotas for Caspian Sea sturgeon catch and caviar exports in 2003.

“After a decade that saw the collapse of sturgeon stocks due to over-fishing, the governments in the Caspian Sea region are now fully committed to enforcing CITES regulations. As a result of their joint efforts to monitor and manage fish stocks and combat poaching, they are truly starting to turn the situation around,” said CITES Deputy Secretary-General Jim Armstrong.

“The international community has played a vital role by working through CITES to motivate the five partners and support them in putting this valuable commercial resource on a sustainable basis,” he said.

The approved 2003 export quotas for caviar total 146,210 kg, compared with 140,237 kg in 2002 and 153,620 kg in 2001.

The approved quotas for sturgeon catch and caviar exports are based on information submitted by the Caspian States and on the Secretariat’s missions to the region to verify survey results.

In developing the new quotas, the Caspian States paid particular attention to Beluga, which produces the most valuable caviar. Beluga stocks appear to be recovering; greater numbers of fish are spawning and a higher proportion of the fish being caught are going into hatchery production rather than into commercial caviar production.

Nevertheless, the Secretariat is pleased with the slightly lower total catch and caviar export quotas assigned for this species in 2003, which should give beluga stocks more time to build up (beluga take 11 to 17 years to mature). By sacrificing some immediate income, the region’s governments have demonstrated their commitment to making the beluga fishery sustainable over the long term.

CITES halted the caviar trade by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation in June 2001 under the so-called Paris Agreement. It gave the four states until the end of that year to conduct a scientific survey of stocks and to start developing a common management plan. The fifth Caspian state, Iran, was not subject to the caviar ban, but, commendably, it too joined the regional effort. The CITES Secretariat published the five States’ proposal for the 2002 Caspian-wide quota in March 2002.

Because many natural spawning grounds have been destroyed, more than 90% of Caspian Sea beluga sturgeon start their lives in artificial hatcheries. Over the past two years, the Caspian States have invested heavily in expanding and refurbishing these hatcheries. They are also changing their methods to improve the survival rate of fingerlings, for example by releasing them only after they reach at least five grams in weight rather than the previous standard of three grams.

Until 1991, two countries – the USSR and Iran – virtually controlled the caviar market, investing heavily in maintaining fish stocks. This made it easy to track the source of any given shipment of caviar. With the demise of the USSR, the system collapsed, and many entrepreneurs dealing in “black gold” sprang up to the replace the state-owned companies.

The Caspian once accounted for 95% of world caviar, although this percentage is now closer to 90%. Official catch levels fell from a peak of about 30,000 tonnes in the late 1970s to less than one tenth that figure in the late 1990s. Reduced river flow, destroyed spawning sites, corruption, poaching, organized crime and illicit trade all contributed to the decline.

One result is that by the late 1990s the illegal catch in the four former Soviet Republics was estimated to be 10 or 12 times higher than the legal take. The legal caviar trade has been estimated to be worth some $100 million annually – making it perhaps the world’s most valuable wildlife resource.

Recognizing the need for action, in 1997 CITES decided to place all remaining, unlisted species of sturgeon on its Appendix II, effective from 1 April 1998. As a result, all exports of caviar and other sturgeon products must comply with strict CITES provisions, including the use of permits and specific labelling requirements. To obtain the necessary permits for export, it must be shown that trade is not detrimental to the long-term survival of the species.

Under the Paris Agreement, the Caspian States committed themselves to increasing their anti-poaching efforts and, where necessary, to changing their national legislation to improve their ability to control domestic markets and enforce their CITES obligations.

The CITES Secretariat is administered by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Note to journalists: For more information, contact Juan-Carlos Vasquez at +41-22-8156 or juan.vasquez@unep.ch, or Michael Williams at +41-79-409-1528 (cell), +41-22-917-8242 (office), or michael.williams@unep.ch. See also www.cites.org.

To read previous press releases, go to Archives.

July 10, 2003

Fish and Wildlife Service postpones beluga sturgeon ruling

WASHINGTON - In light of new research on Caspian Sea beluga sturgeon supplies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has delayed its final decision on a proposal to list the caviar-yielding species as endangered, and has re-opened the public comment period on the caviar-related proposal until Sept. 2. A final decision on the proposal will be made by Jan. 31, 2004.

In response to a petition and supporting evidence suggesting rapid depletion of Caspian beluga sturgeon supplies, the USFWS published in the Federal Register of July 31, 2002, a proposed rule (67 FR 49657) to list the species as endangered.

Recent, more comprehensive findings about the Caspian beluga sturgeon situation have prompted the delay in finalizing the proposal.

USFWS received a new document March 11 "that may have major relevance to this decision (to list beluga sturgeon as endangered)," according to a June 11 USFWS press release. The study, issued by the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, summarizes the 2002 sturgeon stock-assessment survey for the Caspian Sea.

"The secretariat's report contains substantial information that must be considered in our deliberations and should be made available to the public," stated a June 11 press release by the USFWS. "…The current report provides new information regarding changes in beluga sturgeon feeding habits, expanded toxicological studies and increased stock abundance estimates that were extrapolated from the most recent raw data."

Copies of the report are available from USFWS upon request. Comments, information and questions should be submitted to: Chief, Division of Scientific Authority, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 North Fairfax Drive, Room 750, Arlington, Va. 22203; by fax, 703-358-2276; or by e-mail, scientificauthority@fws.gov.

Thanks to South China Morning Post / Sunday 18.5.2003

Thanks Erich Sollboeck for the following Orion Article.Big Thanks Orion for giving our caviar friends of the non financial Cordon Noir Gourmet Club the possibility reading your article.

Orion pls. let us know how we can help you making you very interesting Orion magazine more saleable. Maybe with a link at our Cordon Noir Web?

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-2om/Caviar.html

CAVIAR WARS TEXT BY WALLACE KAUFMANCAVIAR WARS PHOTOGRAPHS BY HANS JERGEN BURKARD / SABA In less than seventy years, Soviet communism turned the breadbasket of Eurasia into a nation dependent on American wheat and grateful for foreign aid in the form of frozen chicken legs (which Russians affectionately called nogi Busha -- Bush's legs -- for George Sr., who sent them). The one food the hungry Soviet Union always supplied its capitalist enemies was a gourmet delicacy, caviar. Will that most Russian of luxuries continue to appear on Western canapé trays in the post-communist era? Maybe not.   At $40 an ounce and higher, the caviar this fisherman holds is worth more than several months' work for most Russians.   Russian black caviar (sometimes gray, brown, or amber) comes from sturgeon that were trapped in the Caspian Sea three million years ago, when the huge lake was cut off from its connection with the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. Some twenty-seven species of sturgeon in Europe, Asia, and North America produce the roe called caviar, but for more than two centuries culinary fashion has declared that the best caviar is Caspian, and the best Caspian caviar is from the giant beluga sturgeon, followed by the sevruga and ocetra. When the fishing brigade pulls in its nets, they empty the catch into one of the processing plant's boats, or deliver them to the "mafia" of fish inspectors. In one of history's ironies, the new communist regime of the 1920s created a state monopoly on the black pearls of the rich man's banquet. In the ancient Silk Road city of Astrakhan, where the Volga River breaks into a vast delta fan to meet the Caspian Sea, a government kombinat (company) commercialized the traditional preparation methods of the salty roe and became a major earner of hard currency for the new regime. No government had ever focused so ruthlessly on material goods or been so blind to the destruction of its natural environment. During the Soviet period the twenty-three hundred miles of the Volga became a giant sewer for the more than sixty million people in its watershed. Over three thousand factories dumped more than one million cubic meters of untreated industrial wastewater into the Caspian annually.     For the highest value caviar, fishermen stun their catch, cut open the live fish, and scoop out the thick strands of caviar. The Caspian sturgeon are anadromous fish that depend on the waters of the Volga and Caspian. Sturgeon are also bottom feeders. Their flat stomachs hug the bottom as their hard noses stir the sediments. They are protected from prey by a triangular back covered with bony plates instead of scales. When their four barbells sense food, their toothless extendable mouths smooch forward to suck in worms, mollusks, crustaceans, and larvae. After six to twenty years in the salty Caspian, the sturgeon beat their way up the sea's many feeder rivers, where a single female might eject up to two million eggs. The giant Volga was once the breeding ground for over seventy percent of Caspian sturgeon, which ranged a thousand miles upstream. The great dam at Volgograd (once Stalingrad) ended the sturgeon migration, and the Soviets began a program of hatchery breeding. While the Soviets overexploited their fisheries along with the rest of its natural wealth, the state-run caviar kombinats did control the sturgeon catch and brought down the wrath of government on poachers and smugglers. With the fall of communism the government companies survived, but law and order in Russia and the new countries bordering the Caspian disintegrated. The failure to replace government monopoly with an enforceable system of private fishing rights left a sturgeon population that was already stressed by pollution at the mercy of rogue fishermen, mafia poachers, and corrupt officials. This legal fishing brigade working its assigned territory once pulled in nets sagging with fish. Now even this midsized beluga sturgeon is rare. From the largely unemployed local population hundreds of desperately poor brakaneers launch their rowboats at night, slipping out into the maze of channels among the willows and reeds. (Unlike the English word "poacher," the Russian "brakaneer" has the connotation of an established profession.) They are joined by well-armed mafia poachers who use boats and radios to outmaneuver government inspectors, who themselves are vulnerable to corruption. Everywhere in Russia officials who have interfered with the illegal exploitation of natural resources have met violence and death. Last fall contract killers murdered a regional governor who had blocked mafia access to local fisheries. All the Caspian nations have regulations limiting fishing and prohibiting poaching, but the high price of caviar, a long tradition of corruption, and dire poverty mean that enforcement is no match for greed and need. The Russian office of World Wildlife Fund estimates that eighty percent of the sturgeon caviar for sale in Moscow comes from black market production. Russia officially exported $25 million worth of legal caviar in 1999, but the value of poached caviar exports is thought to be ten times that amount. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated as early as 1998 that more than fifty percent of the world trade in caviar was illegal. In 2000 the U.S. government fined two importers for using forged Russian labels.   Taxidermist Vladimir Goluvachov and his son show the skin and head of a beluga tha measured more than eighteen feet long and weighed more than a ton.   The U.S. continues to be the biggest importer of Caspian caviar, but the supply is dropping. With demand as strong as ever, prices have risen to $80 an ounce for beluga caviar, $60 for osetra, and $45 for sevruga. Of the three primary species, the highly prized beluga that produces black caviar is near extinction and the osetra is not far behind. A coalition of international conservation groups has launched a boycott of beluga caviar with the motto: "Caviar emptor: Connoisseur beware." Market forces are beginning to take some of the pressure off the Volga delta and Caspian Sea sturgeon. Spurred by rising prices, entrepreneurs in parts of the world where property can be protected are risking the long-term investment in sturgeon farms, and good marketing is trumping the traditional prestige of Russian caviar. Joint ventures in Montana and North Dakota now produce three tons of caviar a year. Fish farmers are also learning how to milk sturgeon or remove their eggs by caesarian instead of killing them. The future of the Volga and Caspian sturgeon, however, is far from secure. The Volga remains a giant sewer, and the once-clean Caspian will soon be dotted with oil rigs, crossed by giant submerged pipelines, and traversed by tankers as the former Soviet states prepare to supply their new allies with oil. Photojournalist Hans Jergen Burkard works for the German magazine Stern, and is the recipient of several World Press awards. Working in Russia, he and Stern correspondent Katja Gloger have broken stories on the mafia, environmental degridation, and abuses within the military and police. Wallace Kaufman has been writing for Orion and working in European Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia since Soviet times. This summer Wm. Morrow will publish Contrary Winds: The Russian Discovery of America, about biologist Georg Steller and Captain Vitus Bering. Copyright 2003 The Orion Society. Reprint requests may be directed to Editors@orionsociety.org

Japan launches caviar production as prices soar

A fish farming company said Friday it has begun producing Japan's first homegrown caviar as prices for the imported luxury soar in the world's second largest caviar market. Sunrock, a Japanese fishery company affiliated with the local government in Kamaishi, Iwate prefecture in northern Japan, has bred 500 sturgeon in a tank at a disused steelworks and hopes the fish will produce some 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of caviar within the next few months. "We have bred the sturgeon for seven years and it's time for them to produce eggs," said Masao Fukazawa, Sunrock's managing director. "This is Japan's first homegrown caviar. We have already received lots of orders from hotels and trading firms. We are overwhelmed by the strong demand," Fukazawa said. Sturgeon is one of the world's most valuable wildlife species due to the prices commanded by its roe and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has since 1997 regulated the international trade in the huge fish. Since then, Japan's caviar imports, which mainly come from Russia, Iran and China, have dropped by 30 per cent while its price has quadrupled, Fukazawa said. "We used to be able to buy one kilogram of caviar for less than JPY 100,000 (USD 840), but now the price can go up to as much as JPY 400,000 a kilogram," he said. Despite the steep price rise and Japan's prolonged recession, demand here remains strong, Fukazawa said. "High demand tells us caviar is recession-free," he said, adding one trading company in Tokyo had asked Sunrock to sell it its entire expected 300 kilograms of caviar. Sunrock plans to sell caviar later this year, but the company has yet to set the price. "For Japanese, caviar is a status symbol. We hope to sell homegrown caviar to those who have never tasted it before at a reasonable price," he said. China, France, Germany, the United States and Russia have already started sturgeon farming for caviar, the official said. According to CITES, 90 per cent of the world's trade in caviar is illegal, dwarfing the estimated USD 100 million a year in legal sales worldwide. Caspian sturgeon accounts for 90 per cent of world production of black caviar. However the legal catch of caviar has slumped from around 30,000 tonnes annually in the late 1970s to less than 3,000 tonnes now, with corruption, poaching, organised crime and illicit trade contributing much to the decline, CITES says. Fis - 13/01/2003

Thanks to Time January 20, 2003

Thanks to Time January 20, 2003

if you can not read clearly just go to http://www.time.com/time/asia

and look in there Archives

Caviar Smuggler Gets 30 Months in Prison

Tue Feb 4, 9:03 AM ET

Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Russian man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for smuggling 98 pounds (44 kg) of caviar into the United States without the required permits, federal prosecutors said on Monday.

Mikhail Ivanovich Kovtun, 59, of Moscow, was arrested at Miami airport in August 2001 with two other passengers who had tins of sturgeon roe hidden in their suitcases. In November 2002, a federal court jury convicted him of violating the Endangered Species Act and lying on his customs declaration, which said he carried no food, wildlife products or commercial goods.

Prosecutors said Kovtun organized the trio's journey from Moscow through Zurich to Miami, arranging for them to smuggle the Russian caviar worth more than $40,000 into the United States.

Caviar is the roe of female sturgeon, a prehistoric fish species found in the Caspian and Black seas. Sturgeon have been protected since 1998 by international treaties that prohibit export of the fish or its eggs without a permit from the country of origin. Importers to the United States must also declare the caviar to customs and wildlife officials.

At a sentencing hearing on Friday U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages ordered Kovtun deported once he finishes his prison sentence.

His two companions, also Russian citizens, pleaded guilty to smuggling charges and had already received prison sentences of six and seven months.

With the sturgeon population dwindling and legal exports limited, customs inspectors have seen a rise in the black market trade of sturgeon roe. In Miami alone, Kovtun was the ninth person in two years sentenced to prison for smuggling caviar.