WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - The United States Fish and Wildlife Service will begin banning imports of beluga caviar and other beluga products from the Caspian Sea on Friday, after caviar-exporting countries in the region failed to provide details of their plans to conserve the fish, which is listed internationally as a species threatened with extinction.
The United States consumes 60 percent of the world exports of beluga caviar, a $200-an-ounce delicacy that is considered the king of caviars. While osetra and sevruga caviars are consumed in far greater amounts in this country, beluga has long had unrivaled international cachet and commanded unrivaled prices.
Its desirability has led to decades of overfishing, and stocks have dwindled dramatically, particularly in the Caspian Sea, where stocks have declined by 90 percent n the past 20 years.
The ban is the first unilateral ban imposed on caviar imports by the United States; earlier, temporary bans had been imposed following the requirements of the international treaty that governs trade in threatened and endangered species.
Widespread poaching and black market trade in beluga caviar has contributed to the overfishing.
The future of the bony fish, whose origins go far back into prehistory and whose armor-plated bodies can grow as long as 15 feet, has been the subject of growing concern in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the ensuing competition among the fishermen of Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan for primacy in sturgeon harvesting.
Iran, which has a detailed program for conserving the fish, also failed to provide documentation of its plan.
In a news release that accompanied her recent study in the journal Fish and Fisheries, Ellen Pikitch, the executive director of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science at the University of Miami, said: "Our findings are very bleak. The majority of the world's major sturgeon fisheries are now catching 85 percent fewer fish than they did at their peak. More than one-third of the fisheries examined crashed within seven to 20 years of inception."
Kenneth Stansell, an assistant director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a conference call with reporters today that despite extensive contacts with the countries is the Caspian region, "we weren't able to encourage the participation we were hoping for." The required data and documentation about conservation efforts was never provided, he said.
By comparison, at least two Black Sea countries, Georgia, and Serbia and Montenegro, have provided some information that the service is now reviewing. In the past year, the Black Sea fisheries provided more than 40 percent of the beluga caviar imported by the Untied States.
The ban announced by the Fish and Wildlife Service comes slightly less than five years after an initial petition for the action by the environmental group Caviar Emptor, which is a coalition of SeaWeb, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pew Institute for Ocean Science.
Asked about the duration of the ban, Mr. Stansell, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said, "What we'll do starting from tomorrow forward is, again, begin our bilateral discussion with these countries" in the Caspian Sea basin.
"We affirm our desire to work cooperatively," he said, but added that any relaxation of the ban "will depend whether or not we receive information and analysis of that info to see if its adequate to meet the conditions" established in a regulation promulgated in March that set terms under which trade in beluga products could continue.
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