I was hoping to pickup some russian caviar for a small gathering this weekend but I’m hearing that there is a major supply issue relating to a UN ban or something to that effect? Anyone got the dope on whats happening to russian caviar and what the next best thing might be?
xiix.
Add a bad Russian economy with the high price of caviar and you get rampant sturgeon poaching. A few species of sturgeon are threatened now because of it including the beluga sturgeon.
Most of what is deamed to be the high end sturgeon caviar comes from the Caspian sea. The Caspian is boarded by Russia, Khazakhstan, Turkmanistan, Iran and Azerbaijan.
The beluga cavier, reputed to be the best of the best is mostly found on the Azeri and Iranian coast. The Sturgeon from the north end by khazakhstan and Russia were not always refered to as Beluga and were considered a lower grade.
The sturgeon population as a whole has pretty much collapsed due to over fishing due to very high demand, which fueled good prices, which carried on the cycle of over fishing.
I could only speculate that the Caspian was heavily polluted, (it has a large river running into the top that ran through some large russian industrial areas, Azerbaijan was a major chemical industy area during Soviet times, Fort Schvenko uranium mine and processing over on the eastern side, and some pretty piss poor dumping controls from the state oil companies of alll of those nations) which did not help the sturgeons breeding cycle, being bottom feeders and all that.
Anyway as the fish stocks collapsed the Azeri government (maybe the others as well) put controls on the amount that could be exported, although they were generally ignored (Azeribaijan along with the others around there never do well on the international corruption scoreboard)
This was followed by a UN ban on caspian sturgeon caviar, this may have helpd quell the demand side.
Now caviar is used to refer to a lot of different fish eggs, so you can probably still get tubs of anything labeled as caviar, but if you want the real Beluga caspian deal, you may soon be totally out of luck.
cheers
NBC
One can now obtain farm-raised sturgeon caviar, in addition to caviar from the paddlefish (a close sturgeon relative). This can be found from a variety of sources on the internet.
I myself have enjoyed caviar from Acipenser fulvescens, the Lake Sturgeon found in Wisconsin waters.
You could always go for cod roe caviar. Cheaper and tastier. 
In Wisconsin volunteers and officials patrol the rivers where the sturgeon breed that normally live in lake Winnebago. It became apparent a number of years ago that poachers were going to be a problem for our sturgeon due to the problems with the world caviar supply. I know at least one person was caught with a lot of eggs they planed on selling. We now have the largest population of sturgeon in the world, and we plan on keeping it that way. The Russians are welcome to take the title if they seed them back to a higher population. Some dumb ass tourist was caught with a bunch of Paddle Fish they kept, when fishing below the Wisconsin Dells dam. I didn’t know isn’t an acceptable excuse for keeping endangered species.
Russian caviar is endangered-species-eggs - that’s your supply issue right there. The various import bans etc are intended to prevent russian caviar turning into extinct-species-eggs, which would be an even bigger supply issue.