Having been virtually fished to extinction in recent years, the beluga - which lays the much sought after fish eggs known as caviar - is to be farmed commercially for the first time ever on the banks of the river Ural in Kazakhstan.
According to a report in The Guardian, the farming and processing venture is said to be both financially and extremely difficult to establish the correct conditions for successful breeding. A consortium made up of the local canning factory and South Korean and American businessmen hopes to farm sturgeon to provide the world's most expensive food - currently having a market value of €12,500 a kilo.
Although the sturgeon has previously been artificially reared in hatcheries and then released into the sea, it has never been farmed from cradle to grave. Under the new proposal the fish would never actually see the wild, the Guardian report stated.
Eggs from the fish, which is currently banned from being commercially fished, are poached and then sold on the black market to rich countries such as the US. The prices the poachers can fetch for the eggs are often more, weight for weight, than a consignment of cocaine.
One of the biggest problems facing the fish farmers is the long wait for the beluga to mature. Usually the fish do not start producing eggs until they are eight to 12 years old. However, the techniques the farmers are planning to employ include keeping the fish in an increasingly saline solution as well as injecting the fish with hormones to induce egg production earlier.
The beluga swim from the saltwater Caspian, 1,000 miles up the freshwater river Ural to breed each spring. However in recent years the onslaught of oil production in the region and increased fishing has led to a demise. The catch of the pregnant females, 10 per cent of their body weight being caviar, has dropped from 103,000 tonnes in 1977 to 5,000 tonnes in 2002, the Guardian report states.
Semyon Khvan, vice president of the Atyrau Balyk cannery, is confident all is well, despite the cries of environmentalists and fisheries experts. "We are being very careful to conserve stocks, catching only 10 to 12 per cent of the estimated stock. It is all carefully controlled. Figures in the west are all out of date, the stock is increasing."
Khvan is hoping that farmed beluga caviar will be the mainstay of future production, all of which would be reared in tanks. "We are confident we have the financial backing and the scientists who can make it work. Caviar is very valuable, we can wait seven years to get our investment back."