(bright upbeat music)
- [Narrator] This is Osetra Caviar
and all of this would cost $5,600.
The amount from these 16 tins
could come from a single Ossetra sturgeon,
which has to be raised for at least seven years
before its eggs are ready for harvesting.
- This fish is about 12 years old,
value approximately three to $4,000.
- [Narrator] But to farm these 20,000 sturgeons sustainably
takes $500,000 a year in operating costs.
From the feed, to the ultrasound checks,
to the very water that keeps them alive.
- [Brian] Each one of those drum filters you see
is about 30k.
- [Narrator] We visited Marshallberg Farm's
10 million facility in Smyrna, North Carolina
to see how they produce hundreds of kilograms of Caviar.
One of the largest costs of this whole operation
is the water
- Behind me are 12 grow out tanks.
Each containing about 40,000 gallons of water
with about 300 fish apiece.
- [Narrator] These pipes are the lifeline for the fish.
They pump oxygenated water into the tanks
and pump back treated wastewater
to this part of the facility.
The water goes through this recirculating aquaculture system
or RAS for short and in one hour
the RAS system can filter through
a million gallons of water.
A potential oversight during a routine inspection
could lead to massive repercussions.
- We've had our share of incidents here.
I've come in and and found a tank
full of floating fish before.
- [Narrator] So only after everything is checked
can staff move on to actually feeding the fish.
The feed especially formulated
so it doesn't float or disintegrate
and it's distributed along the perimeter of the tanks
so all 300 sturgeon have a better chance of being fed.
- We can feed 'em two pounds of feed
and expect roughly one pound of growth.
Approximate cost of the feed is about 75 cents a pound.
The rough total for our facility per day
is about 400 pounds of feed.
In any given month, we expect 20 feed days.
So you can do the math on roughly
how much it takes to operate just this facility alone.
- [Narrator] That math adds up to $72,000 a year.
- We have a significant economic reason
to go after and raise only females.
Females of course go for our Caviar operation
and males go to more of our meat operation,
which is only about 5% of our total revenue.
The challenge is you gotta still raise the males
up to that five year point.
- [Narrator] That's because up until five years
the fish can't be gender identified.
- We have to look at their gonadal structure
in order to determine that.
And that's only large enough when the fish is
of a certain age.
- Once the females are identified,
they're separated from the males
and they live out their remaining days
and these tanks until their eggs are ready.
- Just to give you a sense of scale, these fish
I have from here in 2018, they're now five years of age.
- [Narrator] The older the fish, the larger the yield,
and every quarter the farmers
carefully sort through each of the 300 sturgeon by hand
to see if any are viable for Caviar production.
- Out of 300 fish in here,
we're expecting to be able to harvest Caviar
from 60 fish this season.
These fish here, we got them in 2011,
so they're now going on 12 years of age.
And these are prime candidate fish for Caviar this year.
- [Narrator] They keep their interference with the fish
to a minimum in order to reduce stress because.
- Stressed out fish don't make Caviar.
You got a whopper, she got something in her
- Maybe little, softer.
- It is a little softer.
We do a palpation of the fish on the belly to make sure
that there's something in there for us to look at.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
- [Narrator] If they feel potential for eggs
in a fish's belly, they'll perform an ultrasound.
- Okay, so what we're saying here on the ultrasound,
what appears to be these little white splotches
which are individual eggs,
we can get a profile view of the entire diameter
and roughly project yields based on what we see here.
- [Narrator] A biopsy will help them
test a sample of the row.
- I think we found a good Caviar fish.
Take a peek this, we think this one looks all right.
So you can see the eggs stay in the channel
of the biopsy tool.
We can assess the firmness of the egg, color texture,
and make a prediction that this fish will yield a row
that we can make into
- Is that really good pop?
- a quality Caviar.
So this is not Caviar, this is row at this point.
Only after salting and packing does it become Caviar.
- [Narrator] Eggs change in texture and size
during each cycle.
So if farmers miss the window to harvest,
they have to wait at least a year
to see if that fish has new eggs with Caviar potential.
- If it's really squishy, it's gone past the time
when we should be harvesting it.
Cause if we don't do this step
we're gonna kill a fish that could potentially
yield us great Caviar later on down the road.
But if we don't get good Caviar now, it has no market value.
So this is very critical.
- [Narrator] Harvesting occurs when a fish
is at least seven to eight years old.
The sturgeons are euthanized before their row is extracted.
- Then we'll screen that row sack,
then we will salt the row
and finally we'll place it on a screen
where we'll pick through it with a pair of tweezers,
any form matter out of there,
or little blood clots or imperfectly shaped eggs.
We'll pick through that one by one by one.
And this takes about an hour long process
before we pack it into a tin,
vacuum sealant, and then cold store that tin.
- So this is where we store all the Caviar.
It's organized by grade and the tin size.
- [Narrator] Every harvest is labeled
with a designated lot number
which traces back to one fish
and a small sample is set aside for each lot number
during the harvesting process.
- With Ossetra, you know,
it's part of the grading system is color,
Ossetra Caviar has a tendency to have a golden undertone,
and like the more golden it is,
it can be considered a higher grade.
- [Narrator] Marshallberg Farm primarily produces
three major grades of Caviar, every day, classic, and royal,
and occasionally some rare grades like this gold reserve.
- The grading is based on appearance, texture, and flavor.
And flavor is just, it's just almost instinct,
it is a really buttery, savory,
you know, some just tastes a lot richer than others.
- [Narrator] Lianne can grade
as many as 60 lot numbers in a day during the busy season,
and the process can take up to four hours a day.
- I'm gonna use my hand because it has no flavor
and my brain will not associate any flavors with it.
It's got a nutty, buttery flavor, got some pop to it.
So I would call this a classic grain.
- [Narrator] Marshallberg farm
started their operation in 2011
with about 5,000 fingerlings.
Now they have 20,000 sturgeon
with a projected Caviar production
of up to 1500 kilograms this year.
That's more than double what they produced last year.
The US imported $17.8 million worth of Caviar in 2018
with half of those imports coming from China.
But in recent years, interest in domestic Caviar has grown.
- But we're getting to the point now where our demand
and sales outstrip our operating costs.
- [Narrator] And their operating costs
now include efforts to spawn their crop on site
growing their next generation of sturgeon.
- We have an imperative to complete the loop here ourselves,
but knowing that we have quite a significant inventory
so that affords us the luxury of some time
to get spawning right.
In this tank we keep brood stock fish
in the hopes of spawning them.
We hope that they just do their job naturally
and we come out here one day and get lucky
and find a bunch of fertilized eggs and always have a dream.
(bright upbeat music)