T he words chornaya ikra—"black caviar"—have recently acquired an illicit ring in the Volga River-delta town of Astrakhan, the caviar capital of Russia if not of the planet.(Three quarters of ...

In 1960, the year Mydans visited the Astrakhan Fish and Can and Refrigeration Complex, 93% of the world’s yield of “osetr” and “beluga” caviar came from the Soviet Union.

To be precise, it was black caviar, ... Criminal gangs began operating in and around Astrakhan, Russia's main Caspian port. Shadowy figures arrived at villages to buy caviar from locals.

The relentless hunt for the so-called "Tsar fish" has acquired such huge proportions in post-Soviet Russia that the creature that outlived the dinosaurs is not on the edge of extinction.

ASTRAKHAN (dpa) – A recent decision by the U.N. body CITES to lift a ban on caviar exports from post-Soviet Caspian countries has drawn strong protests from experts who work with the beluga.

Astrakhan’s fish processing factories produce caviar by pressing the fish eggs out through microscopic incisions so the fish stay alive and can breed again in a few years ASTRAKHAN, September 28 ...

CITES bases its assessment of beluga sturgeon numbers on statistics produced by the Caspian Fisheries Research Institute in Astrakhan, Russia’s caviar capital.

A court in the southwestern Russian city of Astrakhan has fined a Russian activist for "illegally obtaining a jar of caviar," RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

As glum Russian fishermen haul in their net, just two small sturgeon are splashing about among the daily catch.