http://www.boston.com/dailynews/205/world/Russian_scientists_Ban_on_Casp:.shtml

Russian scientists: Ban on Caspian sturgeon fishing may be too late

By Associated Press, 7/24/2001 07:28

MOSCOW (AP) The international moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea may have come too late to save the black caviar-producing fish from extinction, the head of Russia's Caspian Fisheries Research Institute said Tuesday.

Last month, Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakstan agreed to halt sturgeon fishing for the rest of the year in an effort to protect shrinking stocks.

But Magomet Amarov, director of the institute in Dagestan, a Russian region on the Caspian, said fishing would have to be banned for at least 20 years for stocks to be replenished, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. At the current rate of poaching, no sturgeon will be left in the sea in 10 years, he said.

Under the agreement reached last month, the countries have until next June to come up with a longer-term plan that would, among other measures, crack down on unlicensed fishing.

Stocks of the Caspian's beluga sturgeon which produces the most expensive caviar have dropped by about 90 percent over the past two decades, victims of destroyed spawning sites, pollution and the end of strict, Soviet-era policing of caviar production.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001