Did you know caviar?

• Caviar - the most luxurious health food! Just 1 tablespoon of caviar has 1 g of hard-to-get omega-3 fats (more than what's in half a can of white tuna). It has only 40 calories, 2.8 g of total fat and 94 mg of cholesterol. Experts think omega-3s help your heart muscle beat regularly and thus prevent fatal heart attacks. Early research hints omega-3s may help prevent depression too.
• Sturgeon are "living fossils" that evolved 250 million years ago and survived the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
• Most sturgeon are anadromous fish, hatching in fresh water, maturing in brackish or salt water, and returning to their natal freshwater streams to spawn. They living in brackish or salt water between spawnings.
• Sturgeon have been harvested for their eggs, called "roe" and processed as "caviar," for centuries.
• In the 19th Century, the United States led the world in caviar production, including 60,000 pounds each year from Lake Michigan.
• During the peak of the U.S. sturgeon fishery (1885-1895), an estimated 25 million pounds of sturgeon were harvested annually from U.S. waters.
• By 1910, sturgeon in the United States were nearly extinct due to over-fishing, poaching, and habitat degradation. U.S. production ended and caviar production shifted to the Caspian Sea.
• Today, Caspian Sea sturgeons account for more than 90 percent of the world's caviar.
• With an area of 238,000 square miles and maximum depth of 3,215 feet, the Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world. It is bordered by (clockwise from the north) Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Russia.
• The most commercially desirable caviars -- beluga, osetra, and sevruga -- are increasingly rare as the beluga, Russian, and stellate sturgeons become threatened with extinction due primarily to the substantial and growing illegal trade.
• The number of adult sturgeons living in the Caspian Sea is estimated to have declined by 70 percent from 142 million adults in 1978 to 43.5 million in 1994.
• International law enforcement agencies report that illegal wildlife trade is second only to the illegal drug trade in volume and profit, the total trade in caviar is estimated at around $125 million, and more than 50 percent of the trade is illegal.
• The United States accounts for about 30 percent of the world caviar market. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. imported 61 tons of caviar in 1994, 54 tons in 1995, 81 tons in 1996. Russia supplies the U.S. with 70 percent of all its caviar imports.
• According to U.S. Customs declarations, recent U.S. caviar imports were valued at $60 million, sold at an average price of $50 an ounce.
• In the United States, caviar is sold commercially at prices ranging from $25 an ounce for sturgeon of Tennessee waterways to $80 an ounce for Russian beluga.
• However, caviar in the illegal trade may be repacked and falsely labeled, thus containing an inferior product for which the consumer still pays top dollar.
• The threat to sturgeon is exacerbated by poachers' methods for harvesting roe. While fishing for egg-carrying females, poachers simply kill all the fish they catch, including males and juveniles. There is no easy, inexpensive way to extract the eggs without killing the fish.
• Because they are long-lived (up to 150 years), sturgeon reach sexual maturity late--between 6 and 25 years, depending on species and gender. Therefore, indiscriminate killing is a serious threat to the species' survival.
• Of the nine species of sturgeon native to the U.S., four are listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act:
  Shortnosed sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum) (E)
  Pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) (E)
  White sturgeon (A. transmontanus), Kootenai River population (E)
  Gulf sturgeon (A. oxyrhynchus desotoi) (T)
• Atlantic sturgeon may live up to 60 years, weigh up to 800 pounds, and reach lengths of up to 15 feet. A 200-300-pound female Atlantic sturgeon may carry up to 30 or 40 pounds of eggs.
• In addition to caviar, sturgeon provide meat; leather for bookbinding and handicrafts; and isinglass (a gelatin made from the swim bladder) used in beer clarification, waterproofing materials, jellies, paint toners, and glues.