[YeahSureWhyNot]

I grew up on Caspian shore. Article says shortage began in the 70s but I would say, from my observation of my father who was a fisherman, even in the 90s there was a lot of sturgeon in Caspian. We would have buckets of caviar at home being prepared for sale. The area we lived in was poor but people always had caviar on the table for breakfast. Also, the article says sturgeon doesn't need to go upstream in freshwater rivers to lay its eggs but it still does, the river Samur near us used to have sturgeon going up. Locals would catch sturgeon and would try to hold the belly hole of the pregnant fish because caviar would start dripping. Nowadays I rarely hear local fisherman catching any sturgeon with caviar, only industrial fishery companies are able to do that and sell 250 gram can of caviar for $100

[jotm]

Yeah, when I was really young I'd have caviar regularly, it was cheap, never thought much of it. Twenty years later, prices seemed insane for what was basically a weekend of fishing (mostly for the fish meat).

On that note, we had freshwater crabs pretty much every week, one big boiling pot of them. They were great, nowadays I can't find any.