About 1340, caviar was sold at Tana in a container made from the tail half of a fish’s skin. Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti recorded both the commodity and its packaging: the fusco. It is a vivid glimpse of medieval trade, long before hatcheries, international wildlife controls and protected geographical names reshaped caviar’s story.
The timeline follows that documented history, from merchants’ records to modern farming, with a source for every dated entry.
How to read this caviar timeline
Read the first column as the date of the event, unless the entry specifies a publication or assessment. Approximate dates reflect the period supported by the surviving source, not a particular day. They do not date the first meal of preserved fish eggs.
Each entry captures a milestone. For the connected story, read the complete history, then explore individual periods through the history hub.
Ancient and medieval
Caviar enters this timeline as an established medieval commodity, sold in a named container. The securely identified trading record used here begins in this period, though caviar’s invention may lie earlier. The distinction rests on what the texts actually describe: sturgeon or fish roe alone does not establish the presence of salted sturgeon roe.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| About 1340 | Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti records caviar sold at Tana by the fusco, a container made from the tail half of a fish’s skin. His account documents an established commodity and its handling. | Pegolotti, translated 1916. |
| 1471 | The surviving manuscript copy used for Pegolotti’s handbook dates from this year. It preserves an account of earlier trade; 1471 dates the copy, not the trade. | Pegolotti, translated 1916. |
Early modern trade
By 1591, a written account explicitly connects the Volga fishery with roe processed into caviar. Giles Fletcher’s description gives the timeline a clear production record, not a starting date for Russian production or caviar’s arrival in every European market.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1591 | Giles Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth describes roe from Volga fishes being made into caviar. The passage is reproduced in the notes to a later scholarly edition of Shakespeare. | Fletcher, quoted in the 1793 edition. |
Nineteenth century
The nineteenth century brings two strands of caviar’s future into view: controlled sturgeon reproduction and commercial American processing. One begins with fertilised sterlet eggs; the other appears in a record of caviar, isinglass and smoked sturgeon. The experiments laid groundwork for later farming, while the processing record captures an existing trade. Neither milestone establishes modern farmed caviar as an industry already in place.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1869 | Ovsjannikov achieves artificial fertilisation of sterlet eggs and rears larvae from Volga stock. This is an early foundation for controlled sturgeon reproduction, not a commercial caviar harvest. | Conservation aquaculture, 2022. |
| 1873 | The Annual record of science and industry reports that the Schacht business at Sandusky is manufacturing caviar, isinglass and smoked sturgeon, documenting American commercial processing during the year reviewed. | Annual record, 1873 reporting year. |
Twentieth century
River damming was followed by large-scale Soviet hatchery construction in the 1950s. Wildlife protections followed, species by species, alongside the remaining fisheries. These developments shaped the industry, but hatcheries chiefly producing young fish for release served a different purpose from farms raising females for caviar. Keeping those operations distinct makes the chronology clearer.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1950s | Large-scale Soviet sturgeon hatchery construction begins following river damming. Production chiefly supplies fish for stocking rivers, an important precursor to farmed caviar but not the same activity. | Chebanov and Billard, 2001. |
| 1975 | Shortnose and Atlantic sturgeon enter CITES Appendix I; European and lake sturgeon enter Appendix II. These protections precede the later listing across the order. | CITES, listing history. |
| 1979 | Atlantic sturgeon moves from CITES Appendix I to Appendix II, a later change distinct from its first listing. | CITES, listing history. |
| 1983 | European sturgeon moves to the stricter CITES Appendix I, following its original 1975 listing in Appendix II. | CITES, listing history. |
| 11 June 1992 | American paddlefish enters CITES Appendix II, six years before all remaining sturgeons and paddlefishes come under the Convention. | Australian CITES list. |
Collapse and CITES
The 1998 CITES listing brought every sturgeon and paddlefish under international trade controls. It was not a worldwide fishing ban.
CITES resolutions guide implementation by Parties. Binding requirements come from the applicable domestic or regional law. A CITES label provides traceability; it does not guarantee a tin’s contents.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 | At its Harare conference, CITES adopts the proposal to list the remaining unlisted sturgeons and paddlefishes, with implementation delayed until the following year. | CITES, listing history. |
| 1 April 1998 | The CITES listing across the order takes effect. Previously unlisted species enter Appendix II; existing Appendix I protections remain in place. | Australian CITES list. |
| 2000 | CITES adopts Resolution Conf. 11.13, establishing a universal caviar labelling system to help identify legally traded roe and its origin. | USFWS, 2004 final rule. |
| 2002 | Resolution Conf. 12.7 supersedes the earlier conservation and labelling resolutions. It brings sturgeon and paddlefish trade measures into one instrument, subsequently revised at later conferences. | USFWS, 2004 final rule. |
| 21 October 2004 | Beluga is listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act, a separate legal step from its CITES listing and the later import suspensions. | USFWS, 2005 announcement. |
| 30 September 2005 | The US suspends the permit exemption for beluga caviar and meat originating in the five Caspian states, including personal effects. Origin, not simply the exporting country, determines the action’s scope. | USFWS, Federal Register notice. |
| 28 October 2005 | A second US suspension notice concerns Black Sea beluga trade. The US beluga explanation distinguishes the two basin-specific actions and the special rule’s exemptions. | USFWS, 2009 rulemaking. |
| 2014 | The five Caspian states conduct no commercial sturgeon catches, according to Russia’s 2015 CITES submission. Catches for research and artificial reproduction continue. | Russian submission, AC28 Doc. 16.3. |
Aquaculture era
China’s production figures give the expansion of farmed caviar a concrete scale. Its biological groundwork reaches further back, into hatcheries producing juvenile sturgeons for release: stocking technology and caviar output tell different parts of the story.
There was no single global starting day.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1980s | Soviet hatcheries produce more than 130 million juvenile sturgeons annually from wild broodstock. The figure measures the scale of stocking technology, not farmed caviar output. | Chebanov and Billard, 2001. |
| 2006 | China’s farmed caviar production reaches 0.7 tonnes, according to FAO’s 2019 GLOBEFISH account, establishing a dated baseline for its subsequent expansion. | FAO GLOBEFISH, 2019. |
| 2018 | The same FAO account records Chinese caviar production of 135 tonnes. These figures measure caviar, distinct from the much larger tonnage of whole sturgeon. | FAO GLOBEFISH, 2019. |
Recent law and status changes
Recent milestones range from extinction assessments to protection for the name Caviar d’Aquitaine. The dates below distinguish publication, legal commencement and scientific proposals, each with its own significance.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 21 July 2022 | The Red List update reports Chinese paddlefish as Extinct and Yangtze sturgeon as Extinct in the Wild. This dates publication of the assessment, not either loss. | IUCN specialist-group account, 2023. |
| 18 February 2025 | The EU publishes Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/342, registering Caviar d’Aquitaine as a protected geographical indication. The regulation was adopted on 13 February. | European Commission, 2025/342. |
| 10 March 2025 | The registration regulation enters into force, twenty days after publication. | European Commission, 2025/342. |
| 2025 | Brownstein and Near publish a proposed reclassification of sturgeon genera, including a revived Sinosturio. The scientific proposal does not itself amend CITES nomenclature. | WSCS, November 2025 report. |
| 22 October 2025; reported 13 November | The IUCN specialist group and WSCS reject both 2025 revisions and propose Acipenser huso for beluga. Explore the taxonomy debate. | WSCS, November 2025 report. |
Dates left out: legend and unverified claims
Ancient banquet stories need more than a mention of fish eggs to earn a place here. A secure date for modern caviar requires an original text that identifies both the roe and its preparation.
Sources
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University of Washington, Silk Road Seattle. Pegolotti's Merchant Handbook, excerpts from Francesco Balducci Pegolotti's Pratica della Mercatura, translated and edited by Henry Yule and Henri Cordier in Cathay and the Way Thither, volume III, 1916. University transcription and introductory dating notes. Text.
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Shakespeare, William, scholarly edition. The Plays of William Shakspeare, volume XV, 1793. Annotation to Hamlet reproducing Giles Fletcher's 1591 description of Volga fishes and caviar. Digitised volume.
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Academic Press. Conservation aquaculture: A sturgeon story, 2022, historical discussion of artificial propagation and conservation hatcheries. Publisher record and text.
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Contemporary annual record. Annual record of science and industry, reporting year 1873, section “Industrial progress during the year 1873”, discussion of American sturgeon processing. Digitised volume.
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Chebanov, M. and Billard, R. The culture of sturgeons in Russia: production of juveniles for stocking and meat for human consumption, Aquatic Living Resources 14(6), 2001, pages 375 to 381. Publisher record and abstract.
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CITES Secretariat. A brief history of sturgeons and CITES, undated historical webpage, archived copy preserved in a US federal regulatory docket. Archived document.
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Australian Government, Federal Register of Legislation. EPBC List of CITES Species for the Purposes of the Act, compilation dated 7 February 2025. Entries for Acipenseriformes and Polyodon spathula. Official compilation.
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US Fish and Wildlife Service. Beluga threatened-status final rule, Federal Register, 21 April 2004, including the history of CITES caviar labelling resolutions. Official issue.
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CITES. CoP14 Com. II. 25, 2007, resolution text identifying the earlier conservation and universal labelling resolutions superseded by Resolution Conf. 12.7. Conference document.
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US Fish and Wildlife Service. Service suspends trade in threatened beluga sturgeon from the Caspian Sea basin, webpage dated September 2005. Agency announcement.
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US Fish and Wildlife Service. Caspian beluga trade-suspension notice, Federal Register 70, 30 September 2005, pages 57316 to 57317. Official notice.
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US Fish and Wildlife Service. Federal Register 74, 22 September 2009, page 48217, discussing the Caspian and Black Sea beluga suspension notices of 2005.
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Code of Federal Regulations. 50 CFR 17.44(y): Beluga sturgeon, current electronic text retrieved through Cornell Legal Information Institute, November 2026. Regulatory text.
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Russian Federation, submission to CITES Animals Committee. AC28 Doc. 16.3, 2015, paragraph 4 concerning commercial sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea during 2014.
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FAO GLOBEFISH. Chinese sturgeon and caviar industry, 30 September 2019. FAO account.
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IUCN Sturgeon Specialist Group researchers. IUCN Red List reassessment reveals further decline of sturgeons and paddlefishes, Oryx, 2023. Published specialist account.
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European Commission. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/342 of 13 February 2025 on the registration of the geographical indication Caviar d’Aquitaine (PGI), published 18 February 2025, Articles 1 and 2. Official regulation.
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World Sturgeon Conservation Society, Paolo Bronzi. IUCN SSG summary report, 13 November 2025, reporting the workshop of 22 October 2025. Workshop report.
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Van Uhm, D. and Siegel, D. The illegal trade in black caviar, Trends in Organized Crime, published online 2016. Published article.
Last checked: November 2026