Sturgeon and Caviar

White sturgeon are the largest fish found in fresh water in North America, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin holds the species’ southernmost spawning population. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife cites historical records of fish as large as 20 feet; a 2001 state report estimated the largest at more than 13 feet and 1,300 pounds. The oldest on record was 103 years old when it was caught.

Adults come up from the estuary starting in December and spawn from February to June, mostly in a short reach of the middle Sacramento River. The fish first spawn at about 10 to 19 years old. One 9.2-foot, 460-pound female carried 4.7 million eggs.

In 1894 the fishermen were paid only for the gutted, headless carcass and for the roe, which some of the dealers made into caviar. In January 1899 one of the largest sturgeon taken in some time reached San Francisco from Black Diamond, in Contra Costa County; over 84 pounds of its spawn went to be made into caviar, at 25 cents a pound. The San Francisco Call blamed the caviar makers for the fish growing scarce.

In January 1910, with the season recently reopened, a 250-pound sturgeon was shown in a Stockton market; its fisherman sold the meat for 12 cents a pound and the roe for $3 a pound, to be made into Russian caviar. In March 1917 a sturgeon 12 feet long and 380 pounds was seined two miles above Colusa and shipped to Sacramento in four pieces; its 95 pounds of eggs sold at $1 a pound.

Serge Doroshov was born in western Siberia in 1937. In 1968 he became director of VNIRO’s Laboratory of Marine Aquaculture, where he supervised research on hybrid sturgeon. While working in Cuba on marine fish breeding, he and his family decided not to return to the USSR; he taught at the University of Washington in 1977 and then joined UC Davis’s animal science department. In 1979, with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, he began his work on the reproduction and broodstock of white sturgeon. In 1980 wild white sturgeon broodstock were spawned at UC Davis for the first time, and the next year commercial farms in California spawned wild broodstock too.

Collecting wild sturgeon from nearby waterways for broodstock took permission from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the help of local commercial fishermen. Ken Beer, then Doroshov’s graduate student, said they “didn’t even know where the sturgeon were or how to catch them.” Doroshov showed that sturgeon could be raised in ponds and tanks and fed an artificial food. With his collaborators he showed that changing the rearing environment and inducing ovulation and sperm production with hormones could override the fish’s slow sexual maturation. The groundwater on the farms helped the females mature faster, and Sacramento’s steady water temperature of 66 to 68 degrees suited them. Farmed females mature in seven to eight years. Ultrasounds told the sexes apart, and the females were kept for eggs while the males went to market as meat.

UC Davis dates the start of U.S. caviar production to 1994, the year the industry became independent of wild broodstock. Sterling Caviar says its Elverta and Wilton farms became the first in the world to produce commercial quantities of caviar from tank-raised sturgeon in 1993. Doroshov retired in 2014 and died on September 26, 2020. Ali Bolourchi of Tsar Nicoulai calls UC Davis “Caviar U.”

Sterling Caviar runs four white sturgeon farms, in Elverta, Wilton, Elk Grove and Ione, and harvests and processes its caviar and meat at Elverta, on East Levee Road. Its broodstock goes back more than 30 years, and its caviar is white sturgeon roe with a small amount of dry salt. It is a working farm with no tours. The meat goes to restaurants, retailers and wholesalers, and individuals can buy it at RW Seafood in Rocklin or Sunh Fish Co. on V Street in Sacramento.

Tsar Nicoulai Caviar farms 40 acres in Wilton, run by the Bolourchi family since 2014. Its hyacinth ponds and tanks recycle up to 90 percent of the farm’s water, and twice a year it opens the farm for a tour and a five-course dinner. The two companies merged in September 2024. Sacramento County counts sturgeon and caviar with bass, carp, catfish and crayfish as aquaculture, worth $29,091,000 in 2024 and fifth on the county’s list of top commodities.

At The Rind on L Street in Midtown, the caviar dip with potato chips is topped with Sterling Caviar from Elverta, and five grams of it can be added to anything. Kru on Folsom Boulevard serves Tsar Nicoulai caviar in its caviar service. Anglers with a sturgeon report card can catch a wild sturgeon in season and must let it go.