What happened to the large sturgeon populations in North America?
Saffron: There were loads of sturgeon in North America when the first Europeans arrived. But the Europeans thought the sturgeon was a disgusting fish, and they wanted nothing to do with it. The Indians caught and ate the sturgeon and the eggs, but the Europeans refused to eat it. If the Europeans did catch a sturgeon by accident when they were fishing for something else, they would feed it to their pigs, or use it as fertilizer; maybe they would feed it to their slaves or servants. But white people just didnt eat sturgeon or caviar. They didnt know how to make the caviar, they didnt know the technique of salting it. In 1873, some Germans who had started a caviar business in Europe, and had gotten Europeans to like caviar, came to the United States. They said to the American fishermen, “Dont throw out your sturgeon, give them to us for a dollar a fish.” That was a lot of money. The fishermen saw the Germans make caviar, and saw how much money they were making. They started to copy the G
