Caviar demand leads Midwest states to limit the take of an ancient fish

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Every spring, fishermen wait for a peculiar-looking fish to swim up the Wabash River between southern Illinois and Indiana.

The shovelnose sturgeon, a prehistoric survivor covered with bony plates and wearing a strip of barbs down its back, is plentiful in the river and lives up to 60 years.

But scientists worry that the decline of another type of sturgeon half a world away could mean trouble for the shovelnose, North America's smallest sturgeon.

The shovelnose and its eggs have become increasingly popular in the caviar trade because the beluga sturgeon, a much bigger cousin that produces the king of caviar, has declined due to overfishing in the Black and Caspian seas. That prompted the U.S. and other countries to restrict or ban the import of beluga caviar.

As a result of the increase in demand for the shovelnose, states are beginning to look for ways to protect the fish.

"The concern is if you keep taking out those big females from the population, what you can do is cause that population to begin to decline," said Purdue University researcher Trent Sutton, who has studied the shovelnose on the Wabash.

Illinois legislators are considering restrictions on shovelnose fishing, including a commercial season and size limit. Indiana will establish similar restrictions this summer and Wisconsin is considering them. States from Missouri to the Dakotas have restrictions of varying degrees on their rivers, where the fish is less plentiful than in the Wabash.

Between the Wabash and Mississippi rivers, Illinois fishermen took 65,000 to 70,000 pounds of shovelnose a year from 2000 through 2004, according to the state's Department of Natural Resources. Preliminary figures from 2005 -- the most recent year available and the year the United States began its beluga ban -- show the harvest shot up to 97,000 pounds.

Missouri's harvest has increased since 2000 from a few thousand pounds to about 35,000 pounds annually.

Because shovelnose are slow to reproduce -- females mature between ages 6 and 9 -- and don't spawn every year, scientists worry that without restrictions it wouldn't take long to damage the Wabash population and, in the worst case, push it toward collapse.

Some fishermen support regulation, if only as a precaution.

Others don't believe it's needed.

"We've done proved to them that all these rules and regulations that they're trying to put into effect is a bunch of malarkey," said John Radloff, a former fisherman in West Union, Ill., who now buys sturgeon roe from Wabash fishermen and sells it to wholesalers and retailers.

Sutton and other researchers believe the Wabash shovelnose population is in good shape -- much healthier than in the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Elsewhere, however, dams, navigation locks and pollution eliminated the fish from Pennsylvania, New Mexico and large parts of Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ohio has been trying to restock its Scioto River at a cost of $3 to $5 a fish for the past five years, with limited success.

Catching the shovelnose is hard work -- the water is cold and the current sweeps far more leaves than fish into long, funneled nets -- but it can be profitable. Fishermen can sell the female shovelnose's shimmering black roe for $40 to $50 a pound -- far more than the pennies a pound they get for other fish.

It's possible for a fisherman to make $1,500 a day after expenses, said Rob Maher, who manages commercial fishing for the Illinois DNR.

Sutton and other researchers tagged about 5,000 shovelnose over two years and found low mortality rates and a stable population. Still, "We didn't really catch any young fish," he said.

That could mean female fish aren't laying eggs, Sutton said, or even that they're already in decline -- although he doesn't think that is the case, considering how many shovelnose of all ages he found. It's also possible, he says, that researchers just looked in the wrong places.

Researchers working on other rivers, including the Mississippi, have cited a similar lack of young fish the past few years.

Ronnie Harrington says he has fished the Wabash for just about all of his 70 years, but he has never eaten a raw sturgeon egg, only the battered-and-fried variety that he learned to eat when he was young.

"If you catch the little bitty ones, you know, you're gonna defeat the purpose," he said.