At BLK-Fish’s farm in Lake Imandra on the Kola Peninsula, harvesting of sturgeon roe for production of black caviar is well underway. This year the company’s 200 mature Siberian sturgeons will give enough roe to produce 100 kg of the delicacy, Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes.
The fish farm is located in the in the outlet for the spill waters from the nuclear power plant, where the water never gets below +8°C in the winter and in the summer can reach +30°C. BLK-Fish has nearly 10 000 sturgeon at its farm, in addition to large amounts of trout.
The Siberian sturgeon was brought to the Kola Peninsula twelve years ago as an experiment. The experiment turned out to be a success, since the warm waters make the fish grow faster than it normally does in the wild. Sturgeons usually start spawning after 15 years but the fish in Imandra produced the first roe in 2012, at around 12 years of age.
BLK-Fish has used roe from its sturgeons to produce hatchlings that has shown a high rate of survivability, TV21 reports.
