Black market caviar goes for about $100 to $150 a pound, according to the officer who led the Sacramento bust.
Since November 2013, 134 sturgeon violations have been recorded, most in the northern part of the state, for everything from possession of an untagged sturgeon, to unlawful gear use, to taking an undersized or an oversized fish.Ī consumer buying legally made caviar from a California sturgeon farm can expect to pay anywhere from $70 to $400 an ounce. They’re expected back in court on July 19 for a settlement conference, when information about the Sacramento case will be exchanged and a decision made as to whether a resolution can be reached without going to trial.Īlthough selling a wild sturgeon or its eggs is illegal in California, poachers aggressively target the fish for their meat and unfertilized eggs, which are made into caviar, says Patrick Foy, a captain with the fish and wildlife department. In early May the Sacramento County district attorney’s office arraigned six men suspected of running a sturgeon poaching enterprise.
And in the other they discovered more than 20 jars of caviar, screens used to separate sturgeon eggs from the membrane that binds them together, frozen sturgeon meat, and scales for weighing meat and eggs. When wildlife officers with California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife raided two houses in the Sacramento area earlier this year, they found a live sturgeon gasping for breath, barely alive, on the floor in the garage of one.
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