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STURGEON & CAVIAR FACTS

First sturgeons appeared on Earth by mutations and evolution from their ancestors, the sharks, about 250 million years ago (extinct fossil family). Fossil discoveries indicate that current genus of sturgeon (Acipenser) dates from the Upper Cretaceous period, 70 million years ago. For comparison, modern man, Homo sapiens, appeared only about 0.1 million years ago and salmon 15-20 million years ago.

Worldwide there are 27 species of sturgeon, all living in the Northern hemisphere and all are threatened or endangered. It makes more and more sense that aquaculture can and will play an important role in saving them from extinction.

If one of the recent record beluga sturgeon (2,156 lbs total weight, 242 lbs caviar weight, Volga River, Astrakhan) would have been sold on the retail market today (around $3,000/ lbs at Markys for example) this fish would have been worth $726,000!The afore mentioned record fish would have been able to “produce” approximately 3.5 million eggs, which in a perfect aquaculture world would supply the stocking material for 100 medium size fish farms for one year.