Original subtitles

(lively violin music)

Downloaded from YTS.MX

It's caviar, the food of the rich.

It is so sophisticated.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

(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)