By Jessica Battilana, SF Chronicle:
Michael Passmore wants me to get into the tank.
I demur, citing my outfit; he offers waders and boots. I demur again, confessing my fear of the tank’s inhabitants, about a dozen giant white sturgeon, each around five feet long. Passmore’s boyish face lights into a wicked smile as he assures me the toothless primordial beasts won’t bite.
That may be true, but the playful eight-year-old fish are smart enough to recognize they’ve got visitors at the tank’s edge and come up to the water’s surface, splashing us as they swim by.
That was my first visit to Passmore Ranch, an 86-acre property in Sloughhouse, California, just outside of Sacramento. With its calm ponds and rolling pastures, it hardly looks like one of the country’s preeminent aquaculture facilities, where some of the world’s finest caviar is produced.
In the last 20 years, the Sacramento area has become ground zero for farmed caviar, and the region now produces around 80 percent of the caviar consumed in the United States. Leading that revolution — at least in terms of volume — is Sterling, a farm in nearby Elverta, California, that began producing caviar in 1993 and now produces 10 tons annually, harvesting between 1,500 and 2,000 fish each year…
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