ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Fishermen and government officials fear a sharp drop in income after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week placed the caviar-producing beluga sturgeon — the world’s most valuable fish — on its list of threatened species.
The agency’s assistant director for international affairs, Ken Stansell, said the move on Tuesday paved the way for potential restrictions on its import to the United States, the world’s largest importer of the delicacy.
He said that in the coming weeks, the agency would propose a set of rules to govern such imports. These rules, which may be modified during a public comment period, will take effect in six months.
They could range from leaving the status quo to completely banning beluga imports, but would probably fall “somewhere in between,” Mr. Stansell said in a telephone press conference.
The agency was acting on a petition by a coalition of conservation groups called Caviar Emptor whose lead scientist, Ellen Pikitch of the University of Miami, called for a ban on imports “until the species has a chance to recover.”
Scientists agree that 90 percent or more of the beluga have been fished out in the past 15 years; in Russia, they have practically disappeared.
In Kazakhstan, the world’s biggest exporter of beluga, fishermen, market sellers and local journalists say there are fewer and fewer beluga each year and that poachers pay off the authorities to exceed the legal fishing quotas.
But government officials claim the species is recovering and oppose any restrictions on the lucrative, if dwindling, trade.
The beluga, which can live 100 years, grow to 20 feet and weigh 4,000 pounds, is prized by scientists because at 250 million years old, it is one of the oldest fish species in the world.
Because it is the rarest of the three Caspian sturgeon species that produce caviar, its salted roe retails for $100 an ounce in the West. The Fish and Wildlife decision does not affect the two other species, the sevruga and osietra that, while also overharvested, remain more plentiful.
The decision was another step in a slow process to curb the overfishing of the Caspian sturgeon — the same fate that befell America’s once-plentiful Atlantic sturgeon, whose caviar was offered free in East Coast bars a century ago.
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