Beluga caviar may become memory

Beluga caviar, which costs about $5500 a kilogram, could literally become priceless - because scientists think overfishing will make beluga sturgeon extinct.

Russia, Iran and other states around the Caspian Sea, the beluga's stronghold, were allowed this month to harvest up to 155 tonnes of the fish a year.

The decision, by Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, was based on sturgeon numbers growing from 7.6 million in 1998 up to 11.6 million last year.

But New Scientist magazine says critics of the decision think there could be fewer than half a million fish - and Cites' own raw data hints stocks fell 40 per cent last year.

"Cites is using unreliable data without any review," said Vadim Birstein, a Russian sturgeon geneticist, "and expects us to believe [the fish] have performed a miracle."

Scientists think sturgeon stocks have fallen about 90 per cent since the 1970s, mainly due to overfishing and an illegal trade by Russian mafia, worth about $1.375 billion, that threatens the fish's survival - and with it the supply of tiny eggs which make up the expensive delicacy.

The decline in the numbers of sturgeon, an ancient species predating the dinosaurs, has prompted US conservation groups to call for a global ban on trade in beluga in favour of farmed caviar.

Though still in its infancy, sturgeon farming may offer some hope for the threatened fish.

Bulgaria's caviar baron, Atanas Chobanov, who last year exported half the 1720kg of caviar sold abroad, has an 800sqm sturgeon-breeding farm.

Even then security is tight. Its eight fish pools and buildings are surrounded by concrete walls and guarded by dogs.

Cites' estimate of sturgeon numbers is made by scientists in Astrakhan, based on a trawl of the Caspian and assuming that 10 to 24 fish escape for every one caught, and multiplying that by the volume trawled.

But Ellen Pikitch of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Washington, DC, said UN and US fisheries researchers assume at most one fish escapes for each caught - hence a far smaller estimate of 500,000.

Cites said its model was justified by previous research, but agreed the data was "contradictory" and that scientists did not agree on its interpretation.

- INDEPENDENT