Sturgeon and caviar of the Caspian

Sturgeon look like something left over from an earlier world, and in a sense they are. Their lineage is ancient; they carry rows of bony plates instead of ordinary scales, feel along the seabed with whiskered snouts and can live for decades. The Caspian Sea has long been their greatest home. The beluga, the Persian sturgeon and their relatives feed in the sea and run up rivers such as the Volga, the Ural and, on the Iranian side, the Sefid Rud to spawn.

Caviar

Their roe is caviar. The English word is often traced back to Persian khaviar, though the etymology is debated, and in Iran the trade was organised for much of the twentieth century around fisheries along the coast of Gilan and Mazandaran, with Bandar Anzali as a centre. Iranian caviar, pale grey and glossy, became an international luxury. At home it was more complicated. Because sturgeon lack conventional scales, Shia jurists long regarded them as forbidden to eat, until a ruling in the early years of the Islamic Republic declared them permissible.

A sea emptied

Overfishing, poaching, dams that cut rivers off from their spawning grounds, and pollution have devastated Caspian sturgeon since the late twentieth century. Most Caspian species are now listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, and international trade in their caviar is regulated under CITES. Hatcheries release young fish to support wild stocks, and much of the caviar sold today comes from farmed fish. A fish that had outlived so much was brought close to the edge within a single century. On the Gilan coast older fishermen still describe the size of the catches their fathers landed: fish longer than a man, laid out on the sand.