Today, the creatures are still harvested in the Columbia River and in Mississippi River tributaries, and there are small fisheries for Atlantic sturgeon in New York and South Carolina. But elsewhere, dams and pollution have added to the fish's troubles. The shortnosed sturgeon of the East and the lake sturgeon of the Midwest are both on the federal Endangered Species List. The taste for caviar, however, persists and so does a black market trade in the delicacy. In California, the commercial harvest of sturgeon is prohibited, but sport fishermen can legally catch the fish, remove the eggs and sell them.
Some people do so far beyond legal limits.
In California, state undercover agents bought more than 600 pounds of illegal sturgeon meat early in 1985, and they believe that the poachers may have sold the caviar to restaurants. The processing of it is real cheap. Since legal meat and caviar can be brought from Oregon, and since sports fishermen may possess meat and roe, catching poachers in California is difficult. Authorities believe the black market trade may be thriving because the demand for legal caviar is growing so rapidly. Legitimate caviar sales in the United States rose from 200,000 pounds per year in the late 1970s to about 700,000 pounds last year.