Though American caviar was of high quality, Russian caviar had the loftiest reputation. In a shrewd and arguably unethical move, U.S. caviar fisheries shipped most of its product to Europe and imported it back again with Russian caviar labels. In fact, in 1900, ninety percent of the so-called Russian caviar marketed here and in Europe was actually coming from the Delaware River. The product was so wildly popular that fisheries self-destructed by depleting the North American sturgeon to near extinction. This indomitable fish, whose prehistoric appearance make it look like a featured player in Jurassic Park, has been gliding through-out the waters of the Northern Hemisphere for more than 100 million years.
Sturgeon also have the longest lifespan and have been known to live a century and a half.
A handful of the twenty-five different species of sturgeon reside in American waters and are sometimes referred to as shovelnosed cats and paddlefish. Some varieties are strictly fresh water while others are ocean dwelling, but swim back upriver to spawn. Today, American caviar is making a comeback through the cultivation of farm-raised sturgeon in the rivers of the Ozarks and the Pacific Northwest. The population is carefully controlled, and efforts are underway to develop a method to harvest the roe without killing the fish. The fishing season for caviar producing sturgeon varies with the water temperature, but usually runs between October and June.