(lively violin music)
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It's caviar, the food of the rich.
It is so sophisticated.
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(lively violin music)
It's really like no other food,
that taste of the ocean, of the sea.
(Rufat speaks in Russian)
It's not just food that you put in your mouth,
it's an experience.
(lively violin music)
Caviar, known for being
the most expensive food on earth.
People are willing to pay amazing sums for it.
Throughout history, caviar
has been the most coveted of delicacies.
It has this myth around it that adds to its value.
People associate caviar with sophistication and power.
Caviar has it all.
On the one hand, royal families consume caviar
and on the other hand criminal gangsters,
so the upper world meets the underworld.
In the past, it was actually the food of the poor.
When I lived in Russia, we had caviar for breakfast,
because it was so plentiful.
Today it can sell for up to $35,000 a kilo.
Everyone's heard of caviar.
People associate caviar with luxury.
It's the most expensive food on the planet,
but I suspect that very few people understand
where caviar actually comes from.
This extraordinary food is in fact
just the eggs of a fish.
But this is no ordinary fish.
This is a fish whose fate has been shaped
by politics, religion and war.
(lively violin music) (explosions blasting)
Once plentiful, they are now
the most endangered group of species on earth.
It's 250 million years old.
It's like we are losing a dinosaur from our planet.
It could withstand ice ages, and it could withstand
all the changes that have happened to the world
in the last 190 million years,
but the one thing they couldn't withstand
was industrialization.
History has not been kind to these fish.
It is kind of amazing that they have survived this long.
Now the battle is on
to save this extraordinary, prehistoric creature.
This really is a race against time.
If we do nothing, these species
will undoubtedly become extinct.
(water splashing)
This is the incredible story of the sturgeon
and one man's obsession to save it from oblivion.
(lively violin music)
(eerie music)
Nowhere is the sturgeon more entrenched
in its history and culture than the Caspian Sea.
(gentle music)
At 1.4 million square miles, the Caspian
is the biggest inland body of water on the planet.
(gentle music)
It's larger than all of North America's
Great Lakes combined.
It's a remnant of the ancient ocean Tethys,
which around 50 million years ago
connected the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
(dramatic music)
Today it is completely landlocked.
Some 130 rivers feed into the Caspian.
But it's unique biodiversity is now under threat.
(water bubbling)
(ominous music)
During the Soviet era pollution from oil refineries,
dam building, overfishing and poaching
has led to a massive 90% decline
of the Caspian sturgeon population.
And now the Caspian is in grave danger of being unable
to sustain marine life.
(dramatic music)
One of the five countries
that surrounds the Caspian Sea is Azerbaijan.
(gentle music)
This former Soviet republic, straddling east and west,
is leading the way to protect this fragile sea.
In its capital Baku, once an ancient Silk Road center,
and now a modern marvel, built on oil wealth,
the stage is being set for the Caspian Sea nations
to restore the fragile health
of this rapidly deteriorating marine environment.
Leading the charge to bring back the sturgeon
to the Caspian, is marine biologist Rory Moore.
Rory works for the Blue Marine Foundation
whose aim is to protect and restore
marine environments across the globe.
(gentle piano music) (whistle blows)
I love Azerbaijan because it's different.
It's an adventure, something is always happening,
but it's very different working here
to any other places where we have projects.
His mission for the last four years
has been to establish a marine-protected area
in the south of Azerbaijan.
(waves crashing)
If successful, this 100,000-hectare stretch of water
will be the first of its kind in the Caspian Sea,
and will create a safe haven that will give the sturgeon
one last chance to make a comeback.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
My main fear is the six species of sturgeon
are going to go extinct
unless what we're doing right now works.
We have to restore the natural habitat for these fish,
otherwise they're not gonna be able to spawn.
I just don't think failure is an option really.
Today Rory is addressing representatives
from the Caspian countries at a summit
held by Azerbaijan's Ministry of Ecology.
My job today is to convince people
that marine protected areas work,
that this marine protected area in Azerbaijan
will work for sturgeon species,
because it's an area that's crucial
for the first few years of their life.
Rory believes the only way
to protect the sturgeon from being lost forever
is to sign this marine protected area into law.
And if we don't do it,
then these fish will become extinct.
But there is far more to these fish
than providing luxury food to the rich and powerful.
To look at a sturgeon is to gaze back to an ancient world.
These amazing creatures have withstood the tests of time
and have barely changed for millions of years.
(gentle music)
They are designed to be survivors.
Their skin is rough, thick and covered
with their protective armor, bony, shell-shaped plates,
otherwise known as scutes.
Of all of fresh water species of fish,
sturgeon live the longest
with an average lifespan of 50 to 60 years.
The beluga sturgeon can live to over 100.
(gentle music)
They're bottom-dwellers and use their four whiskers,
or barbels, which dangle in front of their mouth,
to feel for food.
But despite surviving whatever killed off the dinosaurs
in the Ice Age, over the past 150 years
this fish has been brought to the brink by humans.
(suspenseful music)
The turning point for the sturgeon's fortunes in the Caspian
began during the final years of the Russian Empire.
(suspenseful music) (explosions blasting)
(crowd screaming)
After two World Wars, The Bolshevik Revolution,
the Soviet's quest for modernity
and through the construction of dams and factories,
the sturgeon population was sent into a downward spiral.
Stalin built the Volgograd dam
as part of the process of electrifying Russia,
which was a major step towards industrialization.
And that's spelled disaster for the sturgeon
because it blocked their path back up the river to migrate,
so they could no longer go
to all their old spawning grounds.
Any attempts to stabilize
the sturgeon population were scuppered
by the breakup of the Soviet Union
which led to a frenzy of overfishing.
Numbers plummeted to a new low.
It absolutely decimated the sturgeon population.
People knew that if they could get that caviar to last,
they could make enormous fortunes.
(dramatic music)
For the last four years
Rory has been building his case
to secure the first marine protected area in the Caspian.
(motorcycle engine revving)
The proposed site is next to an area of fishing communities
in Southern Azerbaijan.
During the 1970s and the '80s,
towards the end of the Soviet era,
sturgeon and salmon were fished to the brink of extinction,
which led to a Caspian wide ban in 2009.
(gentle music)
With a dwindling number of fish to catch,
many here are struggling to make ends meet.
(suspenseful music)
This stretch of water could be the perfect place
for sturgeon to thrive.
This shallow, brackish bay is crucial,
because when sturgeon come down the river,
they come out of the river mouth,
and they look for a shallow area that's not too salty,
because these fish have just come out of fresh water,
that's all they've ever seen.
So they need to adjust to the sea.
But there is a problem.
It's perilously close to a traditional fishing ground.
(suspenseful music) (motorcycle engine revving)
These fishermen have come from miles around
on their motorbikes to scrape a living
from whatever fish remain in these waters.
(motorcycle engine revving) (dramatic music)
Like many generations before them,
they're using gill nets, which are walls of netting
that trap fish by becoming entangled in their gills,
as they try to swim through.
Gill nets are a massive problem for sturgeon,
because we know that once or twice a year
they come from the sea, and they come to the river mouth
and they swim up them to spawn.
So the fishermen extend these nets
over the river mouth or up the shoreline,
and they'll catch anything that's moving.
It just shows that this area really,
really needs protecting, because there's very little
to stop this happening.
With the value of caviar so high,
any sturgeon caught in these gill nets
are a temptation to keep.
The fishing communities around here,
they live off the sea, obviously,
and it's a really gray area
between what's poaching and what's not.
You never see sturgeon in their boats,
but then they'd never show us.
With barely any sturgeon left to catch,
and poor returns on other fish,
many in these coastal fishing communities
have fallen on hard times.
You can't underestimate the impact you have on communities
if you're trying to protect these fish.
These fish are incredibly valuable.
If you're taking away the opportunity
for someone to poach a sturgeon,
you can be taking hundreds of dollars
away from their household, which means,
you know, a yearly income.
So it's dangerous, because these fish are so valuable.
There's a price on their heads.
(suspenseful music) (dog barks)
In these closed fishing communities
talk of poaching is a taboo subject.
And many feel bitter that it brought about
the demise of their livelihood.
I'm Rory. Zafar.
When you were fishing years ago
before sturgeon fishing was illegal,
did you catch very big fish around here?
(Zafar speaks in foreign language)
The sturgeon, the fish,
must've been a very big part of your life.
Now that it's gone, does that feel like a great loss?
(Zafar speaks in foreign language)
(gentle music)
Securing this 100,000-hectare site
as a protected area, would mean
that all fishing would be banned,
giving the critically endangered sturgeon
a chance at survival.
Accompanied by local park rangers,
Rory is heading out to the vast open waters of the Caspian.
He wants to take a look at what lies beneath the surface.
Something, very few scientists have done.
(gentle music)
So right now we're in the channel
that runs from the Caspian Sea
right up into Vileshchay river mouth.
So I'm looking for the ideal habitat for juvenile sturgeon,
and I need to find food for them.
Because if they can't feed, they can't be here.
If I can prove that this area is perfect for sturgeon
once they come down the river,
and they sort of acclimatize to the Caspian Sea,
then I can put together a really good argument
to protect this area.
And let's see what we've got.
This is great, look at this, this is full of shrimp.
It's full of tiny crustaceans.
This is exactly what sturgeon want to eat.
You can see here tiny, little shrimp.
This is the ideal diet for juvenile sturgeon.
This is what they're gonna be feeding on
for the first few years of their life
before they make their migration out into the Caspian Sea.
They might spend 15 years before they come back
to this river to reproduce again.
So, this couldn't be better.
(gentle music)
No one is certain just how many sturgeon
are left in the Caspian and its surrounding rivers.
International experts have predicted
that at the current rate of decline,
sturgeon will be fully extinct in the wild
within just a few years.
Rory would be extremely lucky
if he saw a wild sturgeon here.
So he's going to try a completely different way
of finding this elusive fish.
Something never done before in the Caspian sea.
In Surrey, just outside of London, UK,
a team of researchers are using a groundbreaking tool
that changes everything in marine science.
Using environmental DNA, or just eDNA,
scientists can now identify fish and other animals
just by collecting a small sample of water.
eDNA is genetic material that we collect,
which isn't attached to the animal that it came from.
So what we now understand
is that when animals that live in water,
or they come into contact with water,
they leave traces of genetic material,
just like how when we touch things with our hands,
we leave a fingerprint, and there's DNA in that fingerprint
that we can use to identify the person it came from.
And we can catch that material from the water
and isolate genetics from it,
and use that to identify the species that it came from.
The old way of doing it was quite invasive for the fish.
So it involved pulling them out of the water,
electrocuting them, so they're stunned,
and the more we can do to reduce the impact
that we have on the actual animal, the better.
eDNA testing is a new technology.
When I was in university, studying marine biology,
it didn't exist.
If you wanted to know which fish were here,
you'd have to net for them, you'd have to dive
and see if you can find them,
and then you'd have to track them.
With eDNA testing I can find out what's here
without doing any of that.
Now, no one's ever done that in this National Park,
and no one's ever done that in the Caspian Sea.
So it's a real first, and it's gonna be really exciting
to get a result.
(gentle music)
There's been so much overfishing in this sea
over the last 50 years that we don't know
if they're here anymore.
So I would hope to find sturgeon, you know,
one, two, three, four, five species of.
But I hope to find Caspian salmon.
And then I think we might find some lamprey,
maybe some pike-perch.
And we might find something
that no one even knows it's here.
And my biggest fear is
that there's not going to be anything in here.
We're gonna take it to the lab,
and they're gonna tell me that there's no fish.
Collecting an eDNA sample
might only take a few minutes,
but Rory will have to wait several weeks
before these results can be revealed.
(gentle music)
The Caspian isn't the only part of the world
where sturgeon can be found.
In fact, they inhabit the waters
all across the Northern Hemisphere.
Nine of the 26 sturgeon species
can be found in North America.
And just like their Caspian cousins,
history has been deeply unkind to them.
(gentle piano music)
In the late 1800s there were more than 15 million sturgeon
in the Great Lakes alone.
Sturgeon originally were very, very abundant.
They were so abundant, that they actually became a nuisance
to commercial fishermen and their gear.
So often they would just take them out of their nets,
and they would throw them onshore
and stack them up like cordwood, let them dry out.
They would burn them in steamers on the Great Lakes as fuel.
It wasn't always universally loved and desired.
For a very long time people in Western Europe
and in the United States were repulsed by this fish.
And amazingly, if they would catch a sturgeon,
they would feed the raw to their pigs,
because it had no value to them.
This all changed in the 1880s
with the arrival of European caviar traders.
A couple of Germans came over and showed people
how to process the caviar, and how you can make
a very nice smoked meat product.
It was called Albany beef at the time.
And a huge industry then sprung up for the flesh,
and especially for the caviar, and they would ship
barrels and barrels of caviar back to Europe.
The nouveaux riches of France and Germany
had completely taken to caviar.
Many important establishments
such as the Ritz hotel in Paris,
started to include caviar on their menus.
For a brief time in the late 19th century
New Jersey was the largest producer of caviar in the world.
There was more caviar going to Europe
from the USA than from Russia.
It was so abundant, because there were so many sturgeon.
So for a number of years the bars would just use them
like they would peanuts, just for bar food,
just to bring the patrons in.
And it was a nice salty thing,
so it made people drink more beer.
In this frenzy of demand,
the rivers and lakes in the Eastern USA
became empty of sturgeon.
It was a gold rush.
There was just so much money to be made.
Nobody really thought about, well,
if these sturgeons aren't spawning,
and if there's no new generation being born,
there'll be no sturgeon next year or the year after that.
In just 30 years, sturgeon catches
went from tens of thousands of fish down to only a handful.
The world's insatiable appetite for caviar
almost wiped out the entire American sturgeon population.
When you catch a sturgeon, you don't just catch one fish.
You eliminate the possibilities of future generations.
(upbeat music)
100 years later,
in the heart of the Midwest of the United States,
the sturgeon has become a conservation success story.
Rory has traveled to Wisconsin to find out
how one sturgeon population
has managed to make an incredible comeback.
In the Caspian we're up against so many challenges.
It's kind of easy to think that it might be impossible
to restore these populations.
But they've done it here in Wisconsin,
and I will learn how they've done it
and take that back to the Caspian
to restore populations there.
For Rory this is also a very personal journey.
It is in America where he first developed
his affection for this prehistoric creature.
Ever since I was a kid, I've been around fish.
I spent my summers on my uncle's sturgeon farm in California
taking the eggs from the fish, fertilizing them,
fishing a lot, taking the fish out of the tanks.
And ever since I was sort of obsessed with rivers,
with the ocean and with marine conservation in general.
(gentle music)
Rory is heading for a small town called Shawano
on the banks of the Wolf River.
It's known for being the best place on the planet
to see sturgeon in the wild.
This town is clearly all about sturgeon.
I'm driving down the main road here,
and I've just driven past a five-meter long sturgeon
at the side of the road, not a real one,
but they're obviously very important to the people
who live around here.
Sturgeon are extremely fussy
about where they lay their eggs.
And just to find the right spot,
they'll travel over 100 miles, covering up to 20 miles a day
to reach their spawning grounds.
The fish's internal wiring demands
that it returns to the same area, even to the same spot
where it was hatched many years earlier.
(soft piano music)
Despite dedicating many years to saving the sturgeon,
Rory has never seen one in the wild.
I'm excited, you know,
I've been working with these fish for a long time
and I've never seen sturgeon in the wild.
And I've never seen sturgeon spawning.
So for me this is a big event.
It's really exciting to go and actually see
these prehistoric fish moving up the river
and spawning naturally.
There's no other place in the world where you could do that.
(gentle music)
(waves splashing)
No way.
(Rory laughs)
(dramatic music)
That is unbelievable.
And right here.
(Rory laughs)
They're spawning right here on the gravel.
They're coming right up onto the rocks
and laying their eggs.
(water splashing)
And there's the female releasing her eggs,
and the male fertilizing them.
I've never seen anything like this before in my life.
Remarkable, absolutely remarkable.
(dramatic music)
It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.
And they're everywhere.
There must be hundreds of them.
(dramatic orchestral music)
What a great success.
This is hugely exciting and hugely encouraging.
Rory has been invited
by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Hello, Rory.
And is joining Ryan Koenigs
who leads their highly successful conservation program.
This is. (Ryan laughs)
What we have here in Wisconsin,
particularly the sturgeon population
in the Winnebago area where I work,
is probably the strongest sturgeon population in the world.
How old are some of these fish spawning right here?
Some of the fish in our population
we believe to be over 100 years old.
Wow.
There's a wood carving up here,
that's a fish that we handled.
And in 2012 that fish was 87.5 inches long.
We estimate that that fish would've been 100-120 years old
when we handled her.
There's a very nice fish within the Winnebago System.
You'll see males today six feet long or longer,
and you might see, if we're lucky,
we might see a female that's close to seven feet long.
I think people from all around the world
are gonna come and see this,
because this doesn't happen anywhere else.
Yep.
(gentle music)
And people do come, lots of them.
There's thousands of people come through here.
Kids would be bussed in, you know, from different schools
and people from out of state.
Everybody comes around just to see the sturgeon,
and it's a big deal for everybody.
The word gets out, and they come.
(upbeat music)
The sturgeon run is one
of America's great, natural spectacles,
attracting crowds from across the country.
It's a big deal to have the sturgeon in Wisconsin.
We've always heard about it in the news,
and this was the first time that we've gotten
to take a shot at checking it out.
It's pretty exciting.
(people exclaiming)
(lively folk music)
Shouldn't even park here.
For biologist Ryan Koenigs,
this 10-day spawning period is by far
his busiest time of year.
(lively folk music)
Sturgeon had been making the same journey up these waterways
for the past 14,000 years.
They've one thing in mind, to reproduce.
In the shallow water females lay their eggs on the rocks.
When they are ready, the males suddenly thrash their tails
to secure a good position next to a spawning female.
Within seven days, thousands of these eggs will be hatched.
But only a few will make it to adulthood.
Ryan and his team are responsible for monitoring the fish
and to gather as much data as possible.
We measure the fish, we determine
whether they're male or female.
75.6, you got that, Mike?
And we check to see if they're tagged or untagged.
And that information that we're collecting
allows us to learn a lot about the population.
114.
When the fish are as big as you,
it makes the job a little difficult.
If you wanna work with big fish like these,
you gotta be tough.
(lively music)
I think we're doing this.
(lively music)
(gentle music)
With approximately 45,000 sturgeon
in the Lake Winnebago System, another pair of hands
is certainly welcome.
You're gonna help me on the board.
We're gonna measure the fish, so you can be on the tail,
help getting the fish out of the net.
Okay.
Off we go.
We'll see the first one. Look at this guy.
I'm just taking the fish out, we're measuring them
and seeing if they're male of female,
and we're PIT tagging them.
I think this is a male.
(both laughing)
Okay, 47.
47.1.
I've handled farm ones before, but never wild ones.
They're strong.
(Rory grunts)
(biologists laughing)
They feel like one great, big piece of muscle.
It's pretty tiring work.
But it's good fun, it's worthwhile.
I hope we can do this in the Caspian one day.
Sturgeon have made such a rebound in Wisconsin
that they can now help revive the lakes and rivers
in other states, from which Sturgeon died out decades ago.
One of the main ways to rehabilitate the fish population
is through stocking.
So what we'll be doing today
is we'll be actually collecting eggs and sperm
from some of the fish that we handle today.
Oh, female, look at the eggs coming out, wow.
Roughly how many eggs do the fish like these hold, Ryan?
Probably the average female in the Winnebago System
has about between 800,000 and a million eggs.
Million eggs?
The sturgeon needs to lay
an enormous amount of eggs,
because the chance of producing offspring in the wild
are incredibly slim.
Just one out of every 50,000 eggs released by the female
will make it past the end of the summer.
Basically caviar right there,
as fresh as you can get, amazing.
For nearly 30 years Richard Klett
has been raising sturgeon.
And we're gonna fertilize each individual group
with the individual male.
Certain groups of eggs are getting fertilized
by different males. Yeah, yeah, sure.
We'll grab our milt.
Actually, you only need a few little drops in here.
And the sperm really isn't gonna do anything
until we add water. Oh yeah?
We're kinda replicating what's happening
just behind us in the bay here, right?
Yep, yep.
So after we fertilize these eggs, Richard,
how long do they take to hatch?
Typically, it takes about seven days.
To most people this is caviar.
We have a couple of hundreds of these on a cracker,
and it's caviar.
To us, this little egg is gonna grow into a fish
that's gonna grow for 100 years,
that's gonna swim up and down this river
50 times in its lifetime.
I mean, it's just the most incredible story.
As part of the DNR
sturgeon conservation program,
these fertilized sturgeon eggs
are taken to the nearby Wild Rose Hatchery.
In this giant indoor facility
the next generation of sturgeon are being reared,
and after 12 months they'll be released into the wild.
But sturgeon conservation is a notoriously slow process.
It will take at least 20 years or more
for these juveniles to start producing the next generation
in rivers across the USA.
(dramatic orchestral music)
It's Rory's last day, and he's just about to take
an important call.
So I just had an email last night
from the eDNA lab in the UK
telling me that they've got the results through
from the samples that I took
from the marine protected area in the Caspian
to see if there are any sturgeon present.
So I'm hoping that there's going to be sturgeon there,
but we'll see.
Hey, Kat, it's Rory, how are you?
Hey Rory, I'm great, thanks.
I hear that the eDNA results are in from Azerbaijan.
They are and so yeah,
I'm happy to sort of talk you through them.
So in total, we found 21 species of fish in the few filters.
Wow.
Also 20 species in one filter,
and 10 of those species were found in the second filter.
Sadly, none of them was sturgeon.
Oh no.
It's not the news Rory wanted to hear.
Sorry, I know it's disappointing, but it was a long shot
to find something rare in just two samples.
But it does add weight to his campaign.
I think the fact that we didn't pick up trace
of any of these fish just strengthens the argument
for protection and restoration.
This makes me want to protect these fish even more.
(melancholy music)
In the USA, conservation programs
have helped the sturgeon to fight back.
Rory's aim is to do the same for the sturgeon
in the Caspian Sea by creating a marine protected area,
the first of its kind.
Someone needs to care about the sturgeon, you know.
A lot of people don't know anything about the sturgeon
because they're big, they're slow,
they're old and they're ugly.
And you know, they're very, very hard to see.
But these fish are very, very important
for the ecosystems where they live.
They're incredibly important culturally.
And they once were an incredibly important source of protein
for coastal communities in the Caspian.
Since the end of World War II
the battle to save the sturgeon in the Caspian
was consistently being lost.
(suspenseful music)
During the 1950s to make up for the devastating impact
that the dam building had
on the sturgeon's ability to spawn, the Soviets began
to build many hatcheries across the Caspian
and released millions of sturgeon into the rivers.
But despite the population's stabilizing,
their habitat continued to degrade.
I mean, the Soviets really
had no environmental sensibility,
and the Soviet Union was enormously polluted.
I mean, they would dump all kinds of things.
Nuclear waste, I mean they were very cavalier
about all source of pollution.
So, the combination of the dams and the factory pollution
really had a tremendous effect on the sturgeon populations.
And then, in 1991
came the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Communism had been hard enough on the sturgeon,
but capitalism would prove far worse.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union
results in collapse of management and control systems
of the fishery industry.
Consequently, criminal groups emerged
to take over the activities regarding caviar trade.
And this resulted in the end in overexploitation
of sturgeon stocks in the '90s.
Everyone became a poacher.
It became a free-for-all.
People went out poaching just to feed their families.
Caviar became also an underground method of payment.
It became a form of bribery.
During this time, it was crazy.
Caviar was everywhere.
Poachers were active on a massive scale.
It was estimated that illegal trade
was around six to 10 times the legitimate trade.
I think that there was also this case with a funeral car
with half ton of caviar being seized
by the officials in Russia.
(boat engine revving)
In the 1990s, Russian authorities
battled with organized crime groups
to put an end to the caviar black market,
which had become increasingly violent.
It's not just a luxury food now.
It's a dangerous product as well.
In 2002, in response
to the high levels of poaching and the illegal trade,
Russia banned the sale of all caviar
produced in their Caspian Sea territory.
Then, in 2014, sturgeon fishing was banned
throughout the entire Caspian Sea.
And now Russia is working
to restore the sturgeon population in the Astrakhan region,
once the caviar capital of the world.
But despite this, poaching in the Caspian
is an ongoing problem.
(waves crashing)
Poaching in the Caspian for sturgeon
has been disastrous for the populations.
It's too easy to catch these fish when they're migrating.
In response to the growing problem
of illegal fishing, Azerbaijan created
an anti-poaching task force
to patrol its 500-mile shoreline on the Caspian.
(Ismail speaks in foreign language)
Ismail and his team
have to be prepared for anything.
Poachers here can carry guns.
(Ismail speaks in a foreign language)
(crew member speaks in foreign language)
The crew has spotted
a suspicious fishing boat in the distance.
They have to reach it quickly before the fishermen
can dump their illegal catch overboard.
If they're caught red-handed, this is a serious offense.
There has been a serious decline in all types of fish,
and for some fishermen living in areas
where economic opportunities are slim,
catching a sturgeon is a risk worth taking.
(Ismail speaks in foreign language)
It's clear these fishermen
haven't committed any offense.
Judging by today's catch, there isn't much to celebrate.
Even if they wanted to net a sturgeon,
they'd be lucky to find one.
The sign of the times in the sea whose marine life
has suffered decades of overfishing
and industrial pollution.
(boat engine revving)
We cannot save sturgeon, and we cannot stop poaching
unless there's an alternative for fishing communities.
We need to build industry, we need to educate people,
we need to create awareness.
And there needs to be a viable alternative in rural regions,
otherwise people will always poach these fish,
as long as they exist.
(suspenseful music)
Caviar entrepreneur Rufat Tabasaranskiy
has a plan that could provide a lifeline
for both the sturgeon and the local community.
(suspenseful music)
(Rufat speaking Russian)
(dogs barking)
(Rufat speaking Russian)
Like many in this area,
Yassar is struggling to make ends meet as a fisherman.
(men speaking in Russian)
(Yassar speaks in foreign language)
(men speaking in Russian)
(Yassar speaks in foreign language)
(Rufat speaks in Russian)
(engine whirring)
This vast building site will soon be
a state of the art sturgeon farm.
And it's here where Yassar will join many other locals
to help raise these giant fish
to produce sustainable caviar.
The demand for caviar has never been higher,
and it's set to continue to grow.
Once responsible for the sturgeon's demise,
today it is the caviar industry that could hold the key
to the sturgeon survival.
Aquaculture or fish farming has a bad reputation,
and rightfully so.
People associate aquaculture
with pesticides and antibiotics.
And we haven't done it very well until now.
Within just a few months
these giant ponds will be teeming with sturgeon.
(Rufat speaks in Russian)
Not all the sturgeon on this farm
will be harvested for caviar.
(Rufat speaks in Russian)
Returning fingerlings to the sea
certainly can have an impact.
We've seen with sea trouts and salmon
that hatcheries play a major role in conservation.
But we have to ensure
that when we put these fingerlings back,
that they're genetically strong,
and they're able to survive in the wild.
Unlike wild caught fish,
which have a much larger gene pool,
farmed fish can come from a limited genetic stock.
If the genetics aren't diverse enough,
releasing them into the wild could cause major problems,
as any interbreeding might lead to a weakened genetic line.
By turning poachers into gamekeepers
and restocking the Caspian
by releasing hundreds of young fish every year,
people like Rufat are showing that conservation
and aquaculture can work together.
(Rufat speaks in Russian)
I think that if people learned
about the story of the sturgeon, how much of an effort it is
for this great female fish to swim through the Caspian Sea,
to swim 500 kilometers up the Kura River,
and lay her eggs, then to swim back
past the maze of gill nets into the sea,
I don't think people would want to eat wild caviar.
(birds calling)
Nearly three billion people
depend on the ocean for food.
We already take more fish from the ocean
than it can naturally replace.
But although nearly half of the seafood we eat
comes from farms, over 1/3 of fish caught
is converted into fish meal to feed farmed fish.
This is putting great pressure on the oceans
and contributing to their decline.
(suspenseful music)
For every kilogram of farmed fish,
farmers use the same weight in wild caught fish
such as anchovies or mackerel.
Another major ingredient for fish feed is soy.
Huge demand for this crop has led to massive deforestation.
(dramatic music)
At the same time demand for fish around the world
has been soaring.
The end result, empty oceans and destroyed ecosystems.
(gentle music)
As concerns about our oceans and food supply grow,
people are rising up to the challenge
in the search for solutions.
In the heart of the Netherlands
known for being the Silicon Valley of agriculture,
researchers have come up
with a groundbreaking way to feed fish.
(insects buzzing)
This is the largest insect farm in the world.
They're being bred to help tackle
the rising global food problem.
Insects are really packed with valuable nutrients
that include proteins, but also fats that the fish require.
Because of the high protein value,
insects can easily replace the proteins in fish feed.
The insects can be fed with fruit and vegetable waste,
which makes them the ideal sustainable
and natural ingredient for fish feed.
So in essence insects can help the oceans
by being a very good replacer for the proteins
that people at this moment get from the oceans.
So far, insect feed has been trialed on salmon,
and the results have been successful.
Trials for feeding sturgeon have just started,
and this could pave the way for many other fish farms
around the globe.
We need to change the way aquaculture
is being executed today.
If we don't, then we will deplete our resources,
in particular in the oceans more and more.
And it will result in extinction of many species.
By changing the food that our food eats,
not only can we help preserve marine life,
but also meet the nutritional needs of a world
whose population is set to hit 10 billion by 2050.
(dramatic music)
(traffic roaring)
Here we are now, it's been a very difficult project,
and as we all know.
Following years of fieldwork and investigation,
Rory's pleas have been heard.
And it's decision time.
Great task indeed.
I think the take-home message from me
is that we mustn't lose hope,
we must keep trying, we must keep doing scientific research.
And we must keep working with local communities,
because we don't have any choice, but to save these fish.
Okay, thank you very much.
(people applauding)
I hope I showed people that a marine protected area
in Azerbaijan will restore populations of sturgeon.
And I just hope that it happens soon.
It's now or never for this legendary fish,
which has been around since the time of the dinosaurs.
(melancholy music)
(dramatic music)
It's the dawn of a new era for the Caspian sturgeon.
I've always had a dream that sturgeon
could make a comeback in the Caspian.
(dramatic music) (birds chirping)
With the marine protected area,
we've got a real chance at that.
It's gonna take some time, and it'll take some investment,
but I'm confident that in a generation
we'll be seeing more of these prehistoric fish.
This is what we're here to do, right?
(birds chirping) (gentle music)
(water splashing)
(gentle music)