AKAZIE’s team has now nearly ten years of experience in caviar production from Acipenser baerii and A. gueldenstaedtii without killing the fish. These species are easy to keep in aquaculture. They are easy to handle when it comes to stripping. Their grains are big enough, especially when they are spawning for the second or third time. We had egg sizes up to 3.5 mm. The taste is very good (baerii) to excellent (gueldenstaedtii). They spawn every 12 to 18 months, so that you can organize an all-year-round production, if you know how to do it.
But still, everybody wants to have Beluga caviar. That’s the stuff for which consumers pay the highest prices. They say it’s because of the unrivaled taste, the size of the eggs, the price. And because it became rare in the market.
This summer we had our first chance to be invited to the stripping of a few Huso huso, a rare occasion because you need more then 3 strong men to strip them. We could arrange a small test production of Beluga caviar at the facility of a nice colleague, who had scheduled the production of fertilized eggs. We tested our patented process with a few handful of eggs from the first fish. It did not work as well as expected. But later we learnt that the fertilization of these eggs didn’t work either. The eggs were simply overmature. The next fish, however, was perfect for both parties, those who fertilized the eggs and us who activated the eggs and stabilized them. We had perfect Beluga caviar.
The good message to all those who have Belugas: we have the solution for you if you want to keep your precious fish alive.
Times are over where the saying was true: You cannot keep the fish and eat the caviar too. Yes, we can.
