Oklahoma fisheries experts are trying to stay ahead of the curve in protecting and sustaining the state’s paddlefish population as overseas demand for caviar continues to climb.

Tulsa Regional Supervisor and Fisheries Biologist Brent Gordon of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation said over-fishing and pollution crippled the beluga sturgeon population of the Caspian Sea after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, caviar prices soared from about $30 per pound in the 1990s to about $250 per pound today.

A mature female paddlefish will produce five to 10 pounds of processed eggs.

Caviar made from processed paddlefish eggs, Gordon said, quickly became a substitute for sturgeon eggs, which have long been considered the No. 1 choice for caviar. Caviar produced from paddlefish eggs has won taste tests in Europe.

Because Oklahoma is considered to have the best, self-sustained paddlefish population left in the United States — the only place in the world where paddlefish naturally occur, according to Gordon — it has become a popular place for poachers to pursue paddlefish. Because it takes eight to 10 years for a female paddlefish to attain reproductive maturity, Gordon says it is imperative the state develop a good management program to sustain a healthy population of the species.

Gordon said state wildlife officials are pursuing a two-prong approach to protect the state’s paddlefish population, which is prevalent along the Grand, Neosho and Arkansas rivers and the lakes those rivers feed. Paddlefish produced by hatcheries are being stocked in Kaw, Oologah, Texoma and Hugo lakes.

The first prong would include a volunteer program that would establish research stations in areas where anglers would bring paddlefish to be examined for research purposes. Wildlife officials would filet the fish and harvest the eggs from females. Anglers would get to keep the filets, and the Wildlife Department would retain the eggs to be processed for caviar.

Gordon said he would present the first prong of the plan to the Oklahoma Wildlife Commission in September for approval.

“To keep our paddlefish population in Oklahoma as one of the premier populations, the money earned from the processed eggs will be used to fund paddlefish management programs,” Gordon said. “I am taking a wasted resource and putting it back into the program, so essentially the money is going back to the sports angler.”

Gordon said he would have to harvest and kill an estimated 3,000 paddlefish annually to get the information he anticipates the agency will be able to glean from the data collected by the research stations. The first station, Gordon said, would be set up at Grand Lake.

The second prong, Gordon said, is to “put some bite into existing laws” that would discourage illegal harvesting of the species, which can be traced back to the Jurassic Period.

State Sen. Earl Garrison, D-Muskogee, a co-chairman of the Tourism and Wildlife Committee, said he is ready to draft and introduce the legislation Gordon says is necessary to aggressively manage the paddlefish population.

“Because caviar is becoming very rare in Russia, they (state wildlife officials) are concerned commercial fisherman will come in and damage the health of the spoonbill (paddlefish) population,” Garrison said. “I think that any legislation we may introduce next year would be more or less measures that would prevent poaching and over-fishing.”

According to Gordon, the state’s paddlefish poaching problems started appearing in the 1990s. Wildlife began to pursue “progressive management plans” to help sustain the species. Earlier this year, new regulations were implemented, limiting daily catches to one paddlefish per day and personal possession to four.

The wildlife department also launched a tagging program in an effort to get a better understanding of the paddlefish population. According to the department’s Web site, thousands of paddlefish have been tagged in Grand, Hudson and Fort Gibson lakes.