The Beluga Blues

By Anita Hamilton

Some people spread it on lightly buttered toast as a holiday treat. Others wrap it in blinis with a dollop of sour cream. But purists insist that the best way to eat beluga caviar is straight off the spoon, followed by a shot of vodka or a sip of ice-cold champagne. For those who can afford to shell out $100 or more an ounce, these precious salted sturgeon eggs are a taste of what life was like for the Russian czars and czarinas who feasted regularly on fine caviar.

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 as much as 90%--and those native to the Caspian appear to be doomed. Environmental groups have petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to put beluga on the endangered-species list--a move that would cut off supply to the U.S., the world's largest consumer (Americans swallow up to 80% of the annual beluga harvest). The agency held public hearings on Dec. 5 to consider the matter; a final recommendation is expected next summer.

"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 20 ft. from snout to tail and weighing more than 2,500 lbs. 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 over a million eggs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the U.S.

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. The black market for caviar exploded. Today poachers supply 10 times as much caviar as legal traders--some 300 tons per year. The temptations are great in a region where economic opportunities are scarce. A single suitcase filled with caviar, exported via courier, can net more than $100,000. In a typical bust, smugglers in Astrakhan managed to load a Russian air force cargo plane with 770 lbs. of sturgeon roe before it was seized by the Federal Security Service.

Anatoli Vlasenko, deputy director of the Caspian Research Institute of Fisheries, disputes reports of the beluga's demise. "The 90% depletion figure is a gross exaggeration on the part of the nervous media," he says. Still, the Russians have worked hard to sustain the remaining population with hatcheries and export quotas. Banning imports "would be the catalyst for a new round of poaching and illegal trade," says Armen Petrossian, head of the International Caviar Importers Association. Tariffs collected from the legal trade pay for the hatcheries that produce 97% of beluga swimming in the Caspian. Without revenues from the legal trade, says Petrossian, there would be no incentive to maintain the hatcheries or to police poachers.

In the U.S., the demand for beluga caviar has led not just to illegal imports of what some call black gold but also to a rash of false labeling. Arkady Panchernikov, whose Caspian Star Caviar handled some 60% of the caviar imported into the U.S., pleaded guilty last month to six counts of fraud and trafficking without permits for falsely labeling inferior grades of caviar as beluga. "Most of the caviar in the country has been brought in illegally," says Edward Grace, the Wildlife Service special agent who investigated the case.

As Caspian caviar gets harder to come by, all sorts of alternatives are popping up. Scientists can't get their hands on enough beluga sturgeon to start breeding them in the U.S. (there are fewer than five in the 50 states), but America does have its own natural population of sturgeon and sturgeon-like fish. Roe from native white sturgeon and its close cousin, the paddlefish, is becoming increasingly popular. Stolt Sea Farm, near Sacramento, Calif., has boosted production of its Sterling-brand caviar from farmed white sturgeon from 50 lbs. in 1995 to more than 12,000 lbs. a year.

Persuading customers to give up the real thing has not been easy. Even at $30 to $75 an ounce, "it's perceived as cheaper and not as good," says Chuck Edwards, Stolt's sales and marketing manager. That perception is changing. As caviar snobbery gives way to environmental concerns, some top chefs are giving up not only on beluga but on the closely related osetra and sevruga caviars from the same region. More than 100 U.S. chefs and retailers have signed a letter to Interior Secretary Gail Norton supporting a beluga ban. Among them is Rick Moonen, former chef of New York City's Oceana, who recently opened a new seafood restaurant called rm.

"I always had Caspian caviar on my menus," says Moonen. "It was the benchmark of what caviar was supposed to be." But when Moonen noticed a decline in the quality of Caspian caviar a few years ago, he started shopping for alternatives. His menu currently features Blue Island oysters with cucumber sorbet and paddlefish roe. He also offers patrons sea-urchin custard with champagne foam and rainbow-trout caviar. Next up: buckwheat waffles with Sterling caviar. Purists would be appalled, but if that's what it takes to ensure the survival of an ancient sea creature, it may be worth it. --With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow

With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow