Caviar poaching threatens fish population

2000-11-15 11:17

Khabarovsk, Russia - Thousands of villagers under cover of darkness row out on the Amur River in Russia's Far East each night to pursue the precious eggs of the endangered sturgeon.

The poachers drop nets and wait a few hours. Before dawn, they cut open the bellies of their female catch and rake out dozens of kilograms (pounds) of caviar. Sometimes, poachers sell whole fish full of eggs to refrigerator trucks waiting nearby.

Each creamy black bounty fetches thousands of roubles (hundreds of dollars) on the black market - not bad compared to average weekly pay of about 1350 roubles ($50) in the region. But the fishermen of RussiaÆs remote Far East could soon put themselves out of business.

Like tens of thousands of poachers across Russia, people in the rickety villages along the Amur are contributing to a stunning decline in one of the worldÆs last great sturgeon populations.

Most concern about caviar poaching in Russia, the second largest exporter of sturgeon eggs after Iran, focuses on the Volga River in the west and on the Caspian Sea, the worldÆs largest inland body of water. But poaching is spreading all across this vast nation, spurred by the lawlessness and desperate poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia will export 60 percent less black caviar this year than in 1999, largely as a result of extensive poaching and water pollution, which is pushing the once-abundant fish to the edge of extinction.

In the villages of the Far East, poachers often toss bodies of fish overboard or bury them on the shore as offal, interested only in the eggs that fetch 250-300 roubles ($9,20-11) per kilogram (up to $5 a pound) on the black market. When processed and preserved in brine, the eggs bring middlemen 800 roubles per kilogram ($13,50 a pound).

The fish and caviar are sold in markets in towns along the Amur, or smuggled to China. Over the Internet, caviar fans everywhere can buy Amur River eggs for $1 000 or more a pound.

The most common penalty for poaching is a small fine, and neither the punishment nor outgunned police can do much to limit the trade - especially when itÆs the sole source of income in the villages hugging this stretch of the 4 415-kilometre (2 744-mile) Amur.

"Nobody has jobs in all the villages, and all the people pour onto the Amur to make money off poaching," said Nikolai Shkuropadsky of the Amur Fisheries Inspectorate, which regulates fishing here and conducts raids on poachers.

"They exchange fish and caviar for sugar or flour, or sell them."

"Basically, you can make a lot of money and not work for a year," said Vyacheslav Suzdaltsev, a police spokesman in Khabarovsk, the regional capital. "Or you can buy a car. But some throw the money away on drink."

The Amur's threatened species, the sturgeon and its larger relative, the kaluga, have inhabited the planet since the times of the dinosaurs.

The Soviet Union banned commercial fishing of sturgeon and kaluga in the Amur in the 1930s to protect dwindling populations, but the riverÆs fish population has still halved over the past 10 years to 1 900 metric tons, according to the state-run Pacific Fisheries Research Institute in Khabarovsk.

At the turn of the century, fishermen caught 1 200 metric tons of the fish every year, researchers say.

Inspectors recorded 17 000 instances of poaching in this yearÆs spring fishing season. Last year, they seized five tons of sturgeon and kaluga en route to China, the regional customs authority says.

"If poaching continues the way it is, it may totally undermine the stock," said Vladimir Belyayev, head of the Khabarovsk branch of the fisheries institute.

Nationwide, the official caviar trade brings in $40 million a year for Russia, compared with $500 million for the poachers, the Interior Ministry estimates.

Kaluga are the most popular quarry in the Amur because theyÆre twice as numerous as generic sturgeon, though kaluga eggs fetch less money.

While the average sturgeon is 23 kilograms (50,6 pounds), the average kaluga is almost four times that - 80 kilograms (176 pounds). Kaluga can reach huge dimensions for a river fish: more than five metres (15 feet 6 inches) long and weighing well over a ton. But experts have not come across such heavyweights lately, due to poaching.

Kaluga are particularly vulnerable to poaching. They spawn only after they turn 16 years old and can have four-year gaps between spawning seasons.

Only scientists are allowed to catch sturgeon and kaluga in the Amur, to research the stock before donating the fish to state trading companies for sale. This past spring, the scientists caught 70 metric tons but poachers caught at least twice as much, according to the Amur Fisheries Inspectorate.

Graft among poorly paid inspectors is aggravating the problem.

"Our inspectors tend to be interested in catching, rather than protection," said Leonid Ryzhnyov, chief of the inspection group. "They show reports on seizures, but the seized fish is gone." - AP

- AP