Vanishing Taste

What -- no caviar? Gourmets, restaurateurs and conspicuous consumers may quail at the thought, but the possibility is a real one.

The astounding fact is that 85% of the world's supply of this capitalist treat comes from the Caspian Sea, and all Caspian sturgeon breed in a single 1,000-acre sand-and-gravel spawning ground near the mouth of Russia's Volga River--even those caught in Iranian waters. An article in Russia's highbrow literary newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta, signed by a group of intellectuals that included eight biologists, contained a dire warning that the completion of a projected hydroelectric power station would reduce the spawning grounds to a mere 22 acres.

Would virgin sturgeon, urged or unurged, find some other spawning ground? Probably not, said the scientists gloomily. The industrial pollution of European and American waterways has gradually eliminated the big fish just about everywhere but in the Caspian. And every effort to encourage the sturgeon to breed in substitute man-made environments has met with total failure. The signers concluded with the questionably Marxist speculation that maybe a bit more electricity was hardly worth having no caviar to go with one's well-chilled vodka.

When and if the Caspian closes down, the world's high livers will have to adjust their taste buds to Canadian caviar --a slightly sweeter version that currently sells fresh for about $20 a pound (v. about $50 a pound for fresh Russian caviar). But even this supply is limited. Canadian industrial growth may limit it still more, and the taste of the tiny grey fish eggs exploding on the tongue may soon be a fading memory.

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