This is a baby beluga sturgeon,
just about 1 year old.
If everything goes as planned,
in about nine years its eggs will be harvested for caviar,
which in today's market can sell
for up to $35,000 per kilogram.
We visited one of the largest beluga farms in the world
to find out how this expensive delicacy
gets from farm to spoon.
Beluga sturgeon are native to the Caspian Sea,
but these beluga live over 6,000 miles away,
on the Florida Panhandle.
This is Sturgeon AquaFarms in Bascom, Florida.
It sits on 120 acres and features more than 100 tanks
that hold five different species of sturgeon,
including sterlet and sevruga.
It's one of the biggest sources of beluga in the world
and the only one in the United States.
Narrator: Mark Zaslavsky is a Russian immigrant
who imported beluga into the US right before the
government banned all imports of beluga products, in 2005.
Due to the overwhelming demand for beluga,
the fish is classified as critically endangered.
Because Zaslavsky brought his fish over before the ban,
his farm is the only US-based company
legally allowed to breed beluga.
Narrator: The original beluga imported
in 2003 are known as brood stock.
Narrator: At more than 15 years old,
they weigh up to 350 pounds
and measure more than 9 feet long.
And they have one simple job: make babies.
The eggs used for reproduction are removed
from the living fish with a process called stripping.
After the beluga are born,
it takes five years to determine their gender
and around 10 years for the fish to produce eggs
that are ready to be harvested for caviar.
The tanks are continuously filled with fresh water
from an aquifer along with a steady flow of oxygen.
The fish are fed up to three times a day.
Feeding the fish costs up to $40,000 a month.
After patiently waiting for more than a decade, Zaslavsky
was finally preparing to harvest
his beluga at the end of 2018.
But in October of 2018,
Hurricane Michael swept through Bascom,
causing extensive damage at the farm
and killing some of his beluga stock.
According to Zaslavsky,
this delayed his potentially lucrative beluga harvest
by at least three years.
Zaslavsky: Hey, hey, take it easy.
Narrator: In the meantime, the farm harvests eggs
from its other sturgeon species, like sterlet and sevruga,
which take less time than beluga to mature.
The sturgeon is removed from the tank and placed on ice.
The fish is then cut open and its egg sac is removed.
The eggs get separated from the sac
by rubbing it over a metal grate,
and the eggs are collected below in a bowl.
Salt is then added and mixed in with the eggs,
and voilà: caviar.
The caviar produced at Sturgeon AquaFarms
is sold at Zaslavsky's Manhattan-based
restaurant and store, Marky's Caviar,
where this 2-ounce jar of sevruga goes for $175
and where chef Buddha Lo, an alumnus of Eleven Madison Park,
creates a $200 tasting menu
that incorporates the caviar into each unique course.
But there's more to this farm than just making caviar.
According to Zaslavsky, he aims to use his beluga stock
to help repopulate the species in their native habitat.
The company has already donated more than 160,000
fertilized eggs to the repopulation effort.