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Idaho tiptoes into caviar market with “best choice” rating
be Marlene Fritz
At Fish Processors of Idaho in Hagerman, owner Leo Ray aspires to produce four to five pounds of caviar—one of the world’s costliest delicacies—from each of about 100 female white sturgeon this year. By 2011 he estimates he’ll be harvesting eggs from 700 mature females.
With the U.S. banning imports of Caspian Sea caviars from overfished beluga sturgeon, Fish Processors of Idaho and another Hagerman firm, Blind Canyon Aquaranch, are positioning themselves to help close the supply-demand gap with Idaho-grown products. Linda Lemmon, executive secretary of the Idaho Aquaculture Association and a co-owner of Blind Canyon Aquaranch, notes that Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch—which helps consumers make environmentally sustainable purchases—rates both caviar and meat from farmed white sturgeon as “Best Choices.”
Awaiting its first major caviar harvest between 2009 and 2013, Blind Canyon Aquaranch is currently emphasizing sales of sturgeon meat. Without a doubt, producing caviar is a high-risk venture, Lemmon says. “You get into danger when you start counting your pennies before your fish are ready to make caviar.”
Why caviar is a high-risk effort
It takes four to six years and time-consuming, labor-intensive, profit-trimming biopsies to distinguish female sturgeon from males. It takes 8 to 10 years before females start producing harvestable eggs.
Harvest timing is dicey: if harvest comes too soon, eggs will be shy of their flavor peak; if it comes too late, females will have reabsorbed their eggs—and along with them the profits producers hope to make.
At the University of Idaho’s Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station, animal scientist Wendy Sealey says developing “practical, reliable, and non-invasive techniques for determining sex and maturation is critical to improving the production efficiency of sturgeon.”
Gender, egg ripeness: New tests may help
Sealey is part of a multi-state trial that’s examining the ability of non-invasive light-based techniques—near-infrared and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy—and immunochemical assay to replace surgical methods in determining egg ripeness. Funded by the Western Regional Aquaculture Center, the project is led by researchers at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Montana State University and includes the University of California at Davis, Eastern Oregon University, and WSU as well as the UI. Sealey’s role is to test Ray’s and Lemmon’s females several times a year during 2009 to 2011 to verify models developed for California production, while UI Extension aquaculture educator Gary Fornshell heads up outreach.
In a separate UI-WSU Aquaculture Initiative project, Sealey and Fornshell are also
evaluating ultrasound as a means of quickly and inexpensively telling the much-wanted girl sturgeon from the meat-market-bound boys. Working with them are Hagerman’s Matt Powell and College of Southern Idaho’s Terry Patterson.
“If you’re in the caviar business, you really don’t need males,” says Fornshell, “but sturgeon are an extremely difficult fish to sex. There are no external characteristics, no assay methods, no chromosome determinations.”
Males need not apply; ultrasound gender testing
Ray calls sexing his 10,000 white sturgeon a “massive amount of labor.” It demands two months and a 4- to 6-person crew every year. To test the ultrasound alternative, Sealey—hip deep in Magic Valley fish runs—will take numerous images of anesthetized fish. If ultrasound proves accurate, she’ll train producers in the technique.
Lemmon predicts Sealey’s research “will make a huge difference. If we can sex a sturgeon a lot quicker, we can maximize space for females and minimize space for males. That would allow farmers to expand production and become more efficient and competitive.”
Growth in Idaho’s caviar industry is likely to be cautious, says Lemmon. “It’s going to depend on economics.” Magic Valley fish farmers can reliably raise market-sized rainbow trout in 12 months, and that’s what most of them choose to do. However, because sturgeon tolerate 70°F temperatures, she calls them an “attractive alternative” in geothermal waters or marginal aquaculture sites that are too warm for trout.
Contact Wendy Sealey at wsealey@uidaho.edu.
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