‘Like a maternity ward’: how massaging fish can produce ‘no-kill caviar’

Killing critically endangered sturgeon to extract their eggs is not only unethical but unnecessary, say advocates of a more sustainable method

The turning point for polar and marine scientist Angela Köhler came in 2005, when she attended a demonstration on caviar production in the Caspian Sea. Bringing out a two-metre female sturgeon in front of 150 conference guests, the caviar master beat the fish on the head to death before cutting its belly open. “The masters suddenly became extremely nervous,” she recalls. “They went on to say that the eggs were too close to spawning and so they couldn’t use them as caviar. They discarded the entire fish and began the process again with a new one.”

The brutality of the moment is something Köhler still remembers. As an expert in environmental toxicology, she was at the conference to study the damage to sturgeon populations and the Caspian Sea caused by chemical pollution. But the experience set her on a new mission: to find a way to produce “no-kill” caviar.