State Technology Aid Helps Spawn Sturgeon Study

While the state of California was suffering one of its severest fiscal crises, it approved spending more than $50,000 this summer to learn more about the sexual maturity of a female fish.

The state-sponsored study is being conducted by UC Davis researchers, who are working with a handful of Central Valley fish farms eager to develop a way to tell when their female sturgeons will mature and be ripe for spawning.

Such biological knowledge, they say, is the key to keeping California ahead of the Soviet Union, Japan and Europe in a fledgling industry that raises white sturgeon for restaurant meals and extracting caviar. California’s Central Valley already leads the world in domestic sturgeon production.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, when recently informed of the grant, said it was a “ludicrous” expenditure of tax money from the state’s general fund.

“I think it’s outrageous,” Brown said. “Although the sum is small compared to what we usually spend, it accumulates (with other expenditures), and that’s what drives those tax increases we voted for.”

The study of sturgeon mating habits was among 60 grants, totaling more than $13.3 million, that have been awarded and paid over the past two years by the Office of Competitive Technology, a new program run by the Department of Commerce.

The little-known program was created by the Legislature to help entrepreneurs and existing companies find commercial applications for research. The state money goes to nonprofit universities or research centers working in conjunction with private firms, which put up matching funds. Projects approved so far include cancer-related research, laser development, computer superconductivity, skin grafts for burn victims and the use of car-based computers to avoid traffic jams.

Budget woes, however, put a crimp in the program, and the technology office was forced this summer to hold back on $3.2 million in promised grants. Among the cancellations: A $300,000 study of how to genetically improve lettuce.

But the sturgeon study survived.

“It’s worth it, we thought,” said Tom Walters, director of the office. “You have the start of an industry in California to grow these in fish farms. . . . The profit is not on the fish alone, but the caviar that can be produced here.”

The state grant is intended to help unravel the sexual mystery of the fish, which is coveted by restaurants for its meat and by connoisseurs for its caviar. Little is known about the sturgeon, which can live up to 100 years in the wild and takes 20 years to mature.

The idea of raising sturgeon for commercial purposes caught on during the last decade, after UC Davis professor Serge Doroshov developed a technique to spawn the fish quickly. This breakthrough prompted investors to open four Central Valley sturgeon farms, currently the world’s largest commercial producers with 1 million pounds of the fish a year.

Despite their dominant place in the sturgeon market, investors say they still do not know when the females in the farms will mature sexually and carry ripe eggs. Without such certainty, sturgeon farming in California is still risky and could lose its competitive advantage to fish farms in other countries.

“What we’re trying to do as an industry is to . . . control our own destiny,” said Jim Michaels, vice president of Sierra Aquafarms near Sacramento.

Michaels said that worry prompted his firm and three other sturgeon farms to ask the state for the $52,900 grant so Doroshov could develop a blood test to show when female sturgeon are ripe. Doroshov received his money by midsummer and said Monday his research is under way.

The sturgeon project is not the only fish-related grant that has been awarded by the Office of Competitive Technology. It also gave Stanford researchers $300,000 to study a way to make red abalone grow faster.